Zoids: Armory Team
by The Fraternal Brothers
Summary: The Blitz Team has been disbanded for a year. Now a veteran Zoid battler and gambler joins up with two green combatants to make it in the world of Zoid battling. Reads appreciated, reviews appreciated more.
1. Chapter 1: Formation

Zoids: Armory Team

Written by: Something Awesome

This is a disclaimer:

My friend and I actually started writing these in play format about five or six years ago. Neither of us owns Zoids or any related copyrights, nor do we own any actual Zoids. Damn. As such, this is completely unofficial and we do not intend to use this to make money. Subsequent chapters will follow and this disclaimer will be assumed to apply to them. Thanks for your time.

- Something Awesome

One: Formation

Planet Zi, one year after the disbanding of Blitz team. A young man with long blonde hair strode through a large betting hall, a different Zoid battle taking place on each of five screens surrounding a round counter in the center. He shivered slightly; the climate controls being set too low for someone in black short sleeves, blue jeans, and an orange vest. He looked up and saw a sixth screen displaying odds for a battle that would take place within about five minutes. The man walked to the counter under the screen and pulled out a couple dozen credits and placed them on the countertop. "Put it on the Skyfire Team."

The bet-taker counted the money, appearing unimpressed, and asked simply, "Name?"

"Dan Bryant."

Dan then walked over to one of the few unoccupied tables in the room and sat down in a cushioned chair. He sighed as he put his feet up, the heavy black boots making a soft thud as they landed on the table, and looked up at the screen. This was insane; he used to be able to place huge bets on long-shot teams and still come out with more money than he started. Now his luck and his money supply were starting to run out and he was restricted to small bets on the likely winner. He sighed and said quietly, "If my luck keeps up, I'll have to sell my Command Wolf." That was a laugh, selling his home and transportation, and likely his only possession, not counting a couple sets of clothes.

Another young man sat at the table, this one a little shorter and younger than Dan with medium-length brown hair. He wore a light-blue shirt with some sort of slogan in black underneath a dark-blue jacket. "Did I hear you say you had a Zoid?"

"Didn't your mommy teach you not to talk to strangers?"

"Ouch," the new arrival said sarcastically. His face straightened and he said, "I just thought you might want in on a promising new team, but if you aren't interested…"

"I never said that." Dan replied quickly, trying not to lose his only chance at a steady paycheck, a place to live, and a way to garner some respect. These could all be his if he said yes and all he'd have to do would be to blow apart some Zoids, granted he played his cards right now. "Sure, I'll come along if the offer is on the table. What class are you starting in?" New teams had to take a test to see how well they would perform and then be placed in a class based on how well they did.

"I knew you couldn't resist. Well, we're gonna shoot for 'C,' but I don't know if we're gonna make it."

Dan started to get a very nasty taste in his mouth. _Just my goddamn luck_. He sighed, defeated, and asked, "Who else is in the team?"

"So far it's just me and this guy Shaun Larson." Grand; a washed-up has-been would be joining a couple of nobodies and they still needed a spare pilot.

"Who else are you gonna get for a pilot?"

"You don't know anyone?"

Dan looked at the other pilot incredulously. He stared right back, his face full to bursting with sincerity. Dan tilted his head back and sighed deeply, not believing he was about to do this. "Well, there is this woman I know, and she's got plenty of battle experience, but…"

"Yes?"

Dan shook his head. "It's nothing." The other pilot smirked knowingly at him, provoking another incredulous glance.

"I can read people, you know," He ventured. "And with you it's pretty easy." Dan was slightly insulted at that remark but was also worried…how much could this guy read into his last couple remarks? "You were hesitant to add something about that woman, but I won't go into it. If you don't want her on the team, though, I won't push you."

"No," Dan replied quickly. "You guys need to get a little better than a shaky C-rank and I know she can help."

"All right," the other pilot said. Looking over his shoulder, he yelled to a large man in the crowd, "Shaun! C'mere, we've got a pilot!"

The man who was presumably Shaun walked over to Dan. Shaun was built large, though not blubbery in the slightest, with short black hair and he displayed a presence relatively small for a man his size. He wore a pale yellow shirt and a roughed-up pair of khakis. "This guy, Mark?"

"Oh, yeah," Mark said, blushing as he realized he had forgotten to introduce himself. "I'm Mark Sanders. Nice to meet you." He glanced over his shoulder at a fresh round of cheers and groans. "Huh, Skyfire won. No surprise there."

Dan cheered and pumped his fists. "Pardon me for a minute," he said, heading toward the betting counter.

"And here's some more good news," Mark said to Shaun. "That guy, Dan, he knows this other pilot, and he says she's really good."

"Whatever help we can get works, I guess."

Dan returned from the betting counter, counting out a small bundle of credits and smiling. "Well," he began, "It looks like my luck's finally turning around."

A large sliding door slammed shut after a two-second interval of openness, almost mirroring the rage felt by the activator of the door's close button, a bright-eyed woman with medium-length dark red hair. Dan bit his lip, insult having successfully been added to injury. Mark let a smug smirk slide across his face. "Knew it," the younger pilot said.

"Jeez," Dan said, "I never knew Leena could hold a grudge that long."

"No way," Shaun interjected suddenly. "You and Leena Toros used to be something?" Though there was more awe than amusement in Shaun's remark, Dan still gritted his teeth.

Mark pressed the call button near the door. "Could the other two of us come in?" After a response failed to be uttered, Mark added, "I promise we'll leave Dan outside." The door slid open almost insultingly quickly. Shaun and Mark walked into the large complex, Mark apologizing, "Sorry, I stick to my word."

Within was a large garage with a couple of Zoids, including a Gun Sniper and a Shadowfox. However, the most eye-catching mech in the garage was a large, white, tiger-like Zoid Mark recognized almost instantly as the Liger Zero. "Over here," Leena said from a doorway on the other side of the garage. After Shaun and Mark made their way over to her, she said, "Sorry about the way I behaved out there. What did you guys want?"

"Well," Mark began, nervous of the potential nuclear explosion waiting at the other end of his sentence, "Shaun and I were forming a team, and Dan agreed to be on it, and he said you'd be a great addition to it. We _need_ a fourth pilot."

"Find it somewhere else," Leena said stubbornly. "I don't want anything to do with him."

Mark sighed. This was probably going to be a difficult venture, but it could pay off, given a little (or in this case, a lot of) persistence. "Leena, what can we do so that you'll reconsider? You have tons of resources and skill; we really could use your help." Leena appeared to think and didn't respond. "Leena?"

"Nothing."

Mark was stunned. This certainly came clean out of nowhere. "Pardon?"

"You don't have to do anything," Leena replied. "If it means that much to you guys, I'll do it."

"And Dan?"

"I'll find a way to deal with him."

Mark and Shaun were elated. Such remarks as "Thank you" and "You won't regret this" flew at Leena like machine gun fire.

"Of course," Leena added, "you'll also have to deal with my father."

The next day at breakfast, Mark and Shaun had come to realize what having to deal with Leena's father meant. Dr. Steve Toros was a nice man, well intentioned and all, but they found he could be _annoying_.

"All right, team, we have three days of practice until we need to register, so we need to get to work," Dr. Toros said after a simple breakfast. "What do we have to work with?"

Dan dejectedly replied, "A Gyzak, a Command Wolf, a Gun Sniper, and a Dark Horn, and only the Command Wolf and the Gun Sniper are in combat condition."

The doctor wasn't fazed. "Well," he said, "Two of you will get to work on the Zoids that need fixing and the other two can start practicing."

"But what about the other Zoids in your garage?" Shaun complained. "Why can't we use those instead?"

"Because you have no feel for the Zoids or their controls yet," Dr. Toros replied loudly. "If you take them into the exam with only three days' practice, we'll get 'D' for sure." He then adjourned the team to get ready for their assigned tasks for the day: Dan and Leena were to practice and Matt and Shaun were to work on the Zoids.

Down in the garage, Mark leaned on the front of his Gyzak's cockpit, facing Leena. "I hope I'm not pressing too far, but what happened between you and Dan?"

Leena sighed. "Well, we used to be something, of course, and he's a nice guy and all, but he's a reckless gambler. And the problem was that he was winning a lot and attracting a lot of attention."

"You mean, like, _attention_?"

"Yeah," she looked up in thought quickly. "He was just letting it go to his head and he didn't appreciate me like he once had…"

"And so you broke up with him," Mark finished. After Leena nodded, Mark added, "I get the picture. I'm sorry I had to delve like that; I'm just naturally curious, I can't help it much." There was a pause. "Well, I've gotta get going," he said, giving a quick wave good-bye and grabbing a tool box, heading over to help Shaun work on the Dark Horn.

The training simulator was huge, bigger than any Dan had ever seen, and he had been on some fairly wealthy teams. The silver tiles that made up the walls, floor, and ceiling were easily forty square feet each. He guessed that the room on the whole was probably eight acres. Well, now he knew what Dr. Toros had been building all those years.

There was something odd about the floor tiles. They were plain silver at a passing glance, but upon further examination Dan discovered that they were cross-hatched with thin yellow lines, so closely that there must've been hundreds of thousands of little cross-sections on each tile.

His Command Wolf stood on one side of the gargantuan room, and Dan could only assume that the Gun Sniper was waiting at the other end. Considering who the pilot of the Gun Sniper was, he was not looking forward to this first session.

Dan pulled a small remote from the pocket of his faded blue jeans and pressed three buttons. The Command Wolf hummed to life and lowered its head to the floor. The hatch on the top of its head lifted free and swung forward on a hinge, and Dan climbed inside. At the press of two more buttons, the hatch closed and the Command Wolf assumed an upright battle stance.

Suddenly, a group of the small tiles rose up to form a mound, which quickly seemed to grow grass all over it. This happened with many other groups of tiles to varying degrees of height and steepness. Dr. Toros'…_Wait…what did I call him? _Dan thought._ Oh yeah, Doc!_ Doc's voice issued from the speakers in the Command Wolf's cockpit as an image of him appeared to Dan's left. "Like it? It's one of the most state-of-the-art training simulators on the continent!"

"It leaves an impression, if you'll excuse the pun."

Doc chuckled a bit, and then activated a series of green lights all around the arena, a signal for the battle to start. Dan lowered his Command Wolf near to the ground, behind the mounds, making it nearly invisible to Leena across the room. The Zoid navigated the maze of hills, making his way across the simulator until it came to an area completely devoid of the hills that marked much of the rest of the room. The Command Wolf jumped back into them, just dodging a hail of simulated rockets from the Gun Sniper. Simulated or not, getting hit like that would end the simulation and Dan would come out the loser.

Fortunately, Dan saw from which direction the projectiles had come from and decided that Leena wouldn't stick around there for long. He did, however, have to guess as to where she would head to. Dan took a guess and headed the way Leena had been going when she pulled the trigger. He was rewarded with another barrage that confirmed his suspicions; he continued on in the same direction. After a short while of dodging behind hills, Dan figured he was close to the Gun Sniper, so he readied the Command Wolf's cannons and ascended a medium-sized hill.

Much to Dan's dismay, the Gun Sniper was nowhere in sight. He wheeled the Command Wolf around just to find himself staring at the Gun Sniper, its arsenal fully exposed and ready to be loosed. He quickly fired two shots from his cannon, but they came a split second after Leena had fired her extensive weaponry. The instant one of the simulated rockets contacted the small of the Command Wolf's back, the simulated images faded and the tiles lined back up on the floor.

In the garage after the fight, Leena appeared extensively euphoric, leftover adrenaline fueling her victory gesticulations. Dan merely sulked; bracing himself for what he knew was going to come sooner or later. Looking over, Shaun yelled from above the bowels of the Dark Horn, "Lemme guess…" Before he could finish, Dan sternly raised his fist over his head, then raised his middle finger above his fist. "Yep," he said to Mark. "You owe me ten credits."

"Damn it," Mark swore. He sighed, then replied, "Double or nothing on who can get this piss of a bolt off the turbine?"

"No way! You're holding the best ratchet in the set!"

Mark swore again. He took ten credits out of his pocket and folded them over the turbine blades. Then, he took a wire in each hand and held them dangerously close together. "You want the credits now?"

"Mark, it's just ten credits! Fork it the hell over!" Dan ordered irritably. The young pilot dropped the wires and began to chip away at some of the grease that had accumulated on the piss of a bolt. Shaun cautiously reached over and plucked the credits from the blades.

The next day saw a stalemate between Dan and Leena in the simulator, this time in a flatter environment with the surroundings and friction altered to resemble those provided by a barren field. On the third day, the once-decrepit Dark Horn was completely functional and Shaun was sent into the simulator against Dan in the same barren environment. Dan emerged victorious, but not after a vicious battle with several near-misses on Shaun's part. This big guy was a much better marksman than Dan gave him credit for. Mark had been more than a little happy after that battle, being fifteen credits richer on a bet with Doc.

The morning of the exam saw Shaun, Dan, and Leena in a free-for-all in a foggy environment in the simulator designed not only to test the pilots' skills, but also to test Mark's skills as a strategist. He emerged spectacularly, relaying information to each Zoid individually and somehow keeping track of the movements of all three combatants. Leena would use this information to eliminate Shaun early on in the fight, but Dan eventually outmaneuvered her and hit her squarely with a cannon shot. It was his turn to gloat, and in the post-simulation meeting, gloat he did.

"I ran right around you and you didn't see it coming, did you Leena?"

"Um…Dan?" Mark tried to get out.

"Dan, shut up!" Leena shot back. "It was a fluke! Mark was giving you more information than to me anyway!"

"I tried to give everyone equal airtime, but -"

"See? I won fair and square! Besides," he said nothing more, but stuck his tongue out like a child at her. Leena, as if to restrain herself from strangling Dan, stormed off, leaving in her wake grumbled oaths directed at Dan that would make a pirate faint in shock.

Mark glared quickly at Dan and said, "Nice work. Piss off our best pilot without six hours until the contest. You're an experienced pilot; you should know what happens because of that." He then ran off after Leena, hoping she didn't get too far away, otherwise, finding her might prove impossible.

Dan did know the consequences of this: there would be some serious dissention in the ranks that could tear the team apart during the exam. By now, however, he knew Mark well enough that he was sure the young pilot would likely remedy this situation quickly.

Mark uttered every clichéd condolence he could think of, any little phrase that came to mind that might make Leena less upset. He and Leena were in Leena's room in the team hallway, close enough so Mark had found her easily, but far enough away that Leena was a safe distance away from Dan. Mark sighed. _If this is the sort of thing I'm gonna have to do often, the results better be worth it._ Mark pondered the situation a minute and said, "Just put up with him until the exams are over, then you can punch his face in."

That afternoon saw the Dark Horn, Gun Sniper, and Command Wolf loaded into the large snail-like transport Doc kept around and set off for the nearest Zoid Battle Association agency. There, Doc picked up the necessary paperwork, but was stuck when it came to the first question, which read simply, "Team Name:"

"Guys," Doc said urgently. "We never decided on a team name!"

"How about the Armory Team?" Shaun suggested.

Mark wasn't aware that Shaun even knew that word. "Why?" he queried.

"Because," Shaun replied, "someday we'll have enough Zoids that we'll have an armory!" Though everyone else seemed to realize Shaun was joking, Doc wrote "Armory Team" on the line, filled out the rest of the paperwork, and handed it in.

The next several minutes saw Dan and Shaun talk, joke, and grab-ass with each other and saw Leena seethe at Dan after periods of conversation about strategy with Mark and her father. A neatly dressed official, a woman with short beige hair, called out, "Test number 5062, Armory Team, your exam will begin now.

Fifteen minutes later, the Armory Team's Zoids were deployed and their pilots were staring at their competitors, a Lightning Saix, an Iron Kong, and a Red Raptor. In his cockpit, Dan sighed, as did Leena in hers. They both knew what was coming: a well-rounded Zoid as well as a speedy Zoid and a slow, strong Zoid were at the other end of the battlefield on autopilots set to average B-level difficulty. How well or how poorly the team did against these average pilots would determine their initial ranking.

In the Dark Horn, Shaun calmly wiped some of the sweat from his palms, his knuckles white around the controls before the battle even started. Mark was sweating copiously and his heart pounded in his chest. He pulled up the specs for each of the Armory Team's Zoids and a map of the battlefield. Finally, he verified that each of the transmission channels were fully functional. None too soon, as the white module that contained one of the official judge robots plowed into the ground. It rose slowly, making these among the longest five seconds of Mark's and Shaun's lives.

In its classic voice, grand and emotionless at the same time, the judge stated, "This is an official qualification exam sanctioned by the Zoid Battle Commission. All unauthorized personnel within a five-mile radius are to clear the area. Battle mode one-zero-zero-zero. The Armory Team versus the Proctors Team. Ready…FIGHT!"

The Lightning Saichs immediately sped towards the Armory Team. Sensing this, Mark, almost without thinking, said, "Everyone, backs in, Shaun up front!" The Command Wolf and the Gun Sniper immediately backed up against each other behind the Dark Horn. It looked like they pulled it off right…there would be no blind spots, so anyone could see the Lightning Saichs approaching though Shaun could still focus on the other two enemies. The maneuver was novice at best, but Mark assumed the proctors were testing the team's basic skills and would ramp up the difficulty later.

The Lightning Saichs withdrew, though while it was retreating, Shaun took a quick potshot at it. Oddly, the blast clipped the Zoid's front right leg, tripping it for a moment. "They were just toying with us," Dan said. "It's gonna get tougher. No doubt." As if on cue, a laser blast from the Red Raptor struck the ground near the Command Wolf. "Scatter!"

"Hold it!" Mark interrupted. "Shaun, start firing your cannon! Leena, Dan, give him some cover!" The team followed Mark's orders, Shaun making shots that were landing just shy of the Red Raptor, Dan taking shots at the Lightning Saichs, and Leena staring down the Iron Kong, daring it to move.

The Iron Kong made the first move to break the stalemate, bringing a sniper rifle down over its shoulder. Leena immediately took off, but the Iron Kong didn't keep her in its sights, instead turning the opposite way to Shaun. "Damn it!" Mark swore. "Leena, stay on the Iron Kong!"

Leena responded, swiveling the Gun Sniper in the Iron Kong's direction and loosed two missiles just before the Iron Kong fired its rifle. This hasty fire on Leena's part missed the Iron Kong, but the resulting explosion was enough to rock it so the blast didn't hit any vital portions of the Dark Horn, just clipping the right rear ankle. Shaun wheeled his Zoid's cannon to the Iron Kong and launched three quick shots at the off-balance Zoid. The first shot grazed its right arm, the second its chest, and the third its left foot, though the third was redundant as the second shot tore through the Iron Kong's inner workings, crippling it.

Mark pumped his fists and silently gasped a cheer for a second, then immediately turned his attention back to the battle. Looking at the battle map, he could make out only one Zoid on the proctors' side. Where was the Lightning Saichs?

That question was answered promptly as the Dark Horn's leg was cut off by the Lightning Saichs' razor-sharp claws. It then turned on the Gun Sniper, but took a shot in the small of its back from the Command Wolf before it could do any more damage. As the Lightning Saichs tried to get up, its feet were shot out by the Command Wolf. At this lull, Doc quickly assessed the damage to the Dark Horn and Mark paused briefly to congratulate Dan on his close-range marksmanship. "One left," Dan said. "Leena, you want to do the honors?"

Wordlessly, the Gun Sniper sped off toward the Red Raptor. Mark grabbed his hair and yelled, "No! Go together!" At this cue, Dan sped after Leena, but the Gun Sniper took two lucky hits in the leg from the Red Raptor before the Command Wolf could get within a feasible firing distance. The Gun Sniper landed hard, Leena watching the Command Wolf speed by and pump five rounds into the Red Raptor. As it fell, the fifth felled Zoid in this battle, the judge spread its arms wide, yelling, "Battle over! Battle over!" It dropped its arms as it continued, "The winner is…the Armory Team!" It raised its left hand. "Collect your damaged equipment and your results will be posted in the agency lobby.

A half-hour later, Doc, Mark, Leena, and Shaun stood in the agency lobby celebrating the Armory Team's admittance into the B-rank league while Dan was nursing the repercussions from his comments toward Leena the previous day.

That night, Mark lay awake in his bed in the team's headquarters and sighed. "What the hell have I just gotten myself into?" He chuckled softly. "Scratch that. I doubt I want to know." He, along with Shaun, would learn quickly, however, what this new venture would entail.


	2. Chapter 2: Tension

Zoids: Armory Team

By Something Awesome

(with some help from A Little Bird)

Something Awesome:

If you didn't read the disclaimer already (for shame!) go back and read it because I don't feel like opening it up, highlighting it, hitting Ctrl + C, then opening this up and hitting Ctrl + V, even though that would probably take less effort than typing all this, so piss off, logic! hahaha!

Two: Tension

_I hate puns_, Leena thought as she stormed through the halls of the headquarters of the newly formed Armory Team. She had just left a room in which Shaun and - she shuddered - _Dan_ were batting around the most horrible jokes known to mankind. They seemed to love doing this and thus did so often, Mark even joining in on occasion. She couldn't understand it. Mark's Gyzak was gathering dust waiting to be repaired, they had a battle coming up in three weeks - their first - and all they could do was act like idiots.

Fortunately for her, Mark was also not indulging their company at the moment, so Leena sought him out. Judging from his sense of duty to the team and relative maturity - Leena turned a corner - he would likely be doing something beneficial to them - she paused to bang the jammed automatic door, which subsequently opened - and would therefore either be in the training simulator - _nope, that rules the simulator out _- or in the garage.

Leena turned around and walked out of the training simulator and continued down the hallway. She opened a steel door and walked down a not as galvanized staircase. Mark poked his grease-stained head up from behind the Gyzak. "Hey," he said quickly. "Could you throw me that ratchet?" he gestured toward a rogue tool that had somehow left the toolbox. Leena picked it up and deftly threw it to him. "Thanks." The repetitive cranking sound of the ratchet filled the echoic room as Leena took a seat in a nearby chair. "More of their antics, huh?"

"Yeah," Leena replied. "I just don't get those guys."

"Meh, they've got good chemistry, that's all," Mark said. "Bonding off the battlefield helps improve teamwork on the battlefield. You'd do well to loosen up and join in."

Leena's jaw hit the floor. "Join those guys? I'd rather hang out with Harry Champ than them." For a second, Mark had a sour taste in his mouth. "Besides, I don't see you dealing with them!"

"Because I've got work to do on the Gyzak." Mark paused. "Y'know, you could put some old clothes on and help me with this thing."

Leena sighed. "Whatever keeps me busy and away from them." She left the room briefly, only to return five minutes later in a pair of jeans and a tank top, just some clothes Leena didn't particularly mind getting dirty.

Mark began to wrench a bolt loose from a tangle of metal, a task made difficult by the fact that the bolt was nothing short of rusted to some part – Mark guessed it used to be the suspension regulator. Leena climbed up on the other side of the Gyzak and began to work on removing some of the excess scrap from its interior workings.

"How'd you let this thing go to pot like this?" Leena inquired.

Mark puzzled for a minute, slightly distracted by his current task of bolt-wrenching. Then he replied, "It was a while ago. I bought this thing as a clunker - you should have seen it back then - and thought I could fix it up, or get someone to fix it." He paused to jiggle the bolt with the wrench. "It turns out that fixing it would cost more credits than I could scrounge in a year and I never had time to fix it on my own." He grunted as he put more of his weight behind the wrench in a vain attempt to loosen the bolt.

Leena was about to reply when the door opened, this time presenting a guffawing Dan and a Shaun nearly in tears from the hysterics. "Do I want to know?" Leena asked.

Dan quickly regained his composure. "Guys, what's the difference between a corn muffin and an all-girls summer camp?"

"That's it," Leena said, fed up. "I'm leaving." She muscled her way past Shaun and Dan and left.

As soon as she left, Dan blurted the punch-line: "I don't go prowling around a corn muffin at three in the morning sniffing panties!"

Mark couldn't help but break down in laughter. After he stopped, he inquired if either Dan or Shaun could help him with the Gyzak. Before he could finish, Shaun was at the door at the top of the stairs. Even after all the time the two had traveled together, Mark had never seen him run so fast. Dan sighed. "Okay, I guess I'll help."

"Good," Mark replied. A few minutes of silent work - broken only by requests for tools - passed quickly. Then Mark said, "Let me try one. What's the difference between corn muffins and orphanages?" Dan shrugged. "I never blew up a dozen corn muffins in the same night!"

Dan chuckled quietly. "It needs some work, but nice try."

After three weeks of work, parts replacements, and numerous jokes of varying quality and vulgarity, Mark, Dan, and Doc went over the Gyzak and resolved that it was likely combat-ready. They decided to put the Gyzak through some standard paces, then send it into combat against Shaun and the Dark Horn.

The training simulator had taken on the appearance of a mucky, swampy battlefield. Mark had never been to the swamplands on the planet's southern hemisphere, but knew they were troublesome spots for Zoid battles. He prayed that the Gyzak's traction would hold and that he would emerge from the battle without shaking, neither from nerves nor shell-shock. After pressing a sequence of buttons on the control panel, Doc's voice cackled through the Gyzak's speaker systems.

"All right, you two. Let's get this show on the road! And Shawn," Doc added, "don't overtax either Zoid."

"Mark will wish I had time to," Shaun replied wickedly.

Mark gritted his teeth as the Dark Horn lowered its main gun. He teased the controls left and right, glad for the Gyzak's ability to strafe. Without warning, he punched the Gyzak's controls to the left and peppered the Dark Horn with machine gun shot from its tail. Some of the simulated shot hit, but it was glancing at best. Whatever it was, it wouldn't have done enough damage in reality to have ended the battle. Of course, this was more than could be said for the Dark Horn's guns. Mark recognized the danger it posed and sped backward and to the right, keeping out of a direct line of fire with the Dark Horn.

This fact, however, didn't stop Shawn from pumping round after round at the Gyzak. Mark prided his Gyzak on its speed and agility and intended to use them to his full advantage, expertly weaving the large scorpion Zoid between the simulated trees and the Dark Horn's shots. He quickly realized that merely running around wasn't going to end this battle, but neither would his machine guns against such armor. He would have to close in stealthily and threaten the Dark Horn with the Gyzak's pincers.

But whereas Mark was running idea after idea through his head, Shawn merely smiled smugly. He knew he had the advantage. It would just take one well-placed shot from his cannon to end the simulation. Suddenly, he heard a small, metallic thud to the side of his cockpit. There was the Gyzak, speeding rapidly toward the Dark Horn.

Shawn immediately whirled the Dark Horn's cannon around and fired a shot at the Gyzak. Mark quickly jerked the controls to the right. As he continued to move the controls, Mark found he was on a slick part of the arena floor. The Dark Horn's cannon had reloaded and was now aimed right at him, and his Zoid couldn't move quickly enough.

The simulated images faded and the training grid receded into the floor. Mark was looking down, panting from the adrenaline rush. Shawn was pumping his fists into the air and cheering for himself.

After the Zoids had returned to the garage and the pilots exited them, Dan and Leena appeared. Dan congratulated Shawn, cracking a few jokes while they were at it. Not wanting to be associated with Dan at this point (or any point for that matter), Leena instead went to console Mark.

"Hey, you just hit some bad luck," she offered. "It'll turn around."

Mark sighed. "I need to talk to Doc. There's a weapons issue I need to take care of."

"NO WAY! NOT GONNA HAPPEN!" Doc yelled at Mark. Mark had just presented an idea to mount a more powerful cannon on the Gyzak's tail. "Do you have any idea how much that would cost? We don't have that kind of funding right now!" Noticing Mark's still-falling expression, he added, "I'm behind you one-hundred percent on the idea, Mark, but we can't simply _splurge_ on accessories right out of the gate!"

"Okay," Mark conceded. "But don't put me in the next battle. I think I have a lot more work to do on my piloting and on the Gyzak before I can take the field."

"That's fine," Doc replied. "Dan, Shawn, and Leena should be all we need on the battlefield for the time being." Mark started to leave, but Doc kept him for a small while longer. "Oh, I finally received the information on the B-rank teams. Took 'em long enough…If I were commissioner, I would have sent it out before we had even been assigned a rank!"

Despite his mood, Mark couldn't help but smirk at what he had come to conclude was Doc's _modus operandi_ of outrageous claims and exaggerated speeches. He thanked Doc and excused himself to drive to the nearby betting hall to unwind.

There, he looked over the dossiers while brooding over a glass of water. After five teams, Mark came to the information on the team they would be facing: the Culling Team. The name intimidated him for a second, but he read on.

The Culling Team had a strange record, going 12-2 in B-Rank, 5-10 when brought up to A-Rank, then 17-6 after being demoted to B-Rank again. They attributed much of their success to pilot Elliot Handel, who was injured for much of the team's stay in A-Rank. Their Zoids included a heavily-armed Iron Kong, a Dibison, and a Heldigunner. This was obviously not going to be a battle fought in close-quarters. Considering his performance in the training session, Mark was glad he wouldn't be on the battlefield for this fight. He sighed and continued to mentally review the events of his simulated fight with the Dark Horn.

After a few minutes, a raven-haired young woman in a light blue jumpsuit with black trim and a few elegant leather pouches walked over to him. "Are you all right?" she asked simply.

"I'm fine," Mark lied just as simply.

"Are you sure?" the girl replied, undeterred. "You don't look it."

"Do I know you?" Mark asked in an attempt to remove her from his presence.

"I'm Marina Stonewall of the Nitrous Team," she said. "Now you know me." Mark bit his lip subtly. "Could I sit down? You need someone to talk to."

"Sure, you can sit," Mark conceded. "But there's nothing wrong."

"Lose the tone. I can read people, you know," Marina said. "And with you it's pretty easy."

Mark felt betrayed by his own words. "It sounds ridiculous. I'd rather not talk about it."

"Well, that's kind of obvious."

Mark shot her a look.

"Oh, I'm sorry." She said, sincerely, as far as he could discern. "Still, I know people, how they work and all, and you seem like you could use someone to just listen."

Mark had been doing a lot of listening himself lately, what with Leena and Dan and all the emotional bridging he'd had to do to make their team come together in some facet. Who knew? Maybe it _would_ be nice to be the talker for once.

"Oh, what the hell," he said, letting out a deep breath that he'd been holding onto a bit too long in his chest. "I just got a Zoids team started. I've been piloting Zoids for years, and this is the first team I've ever really gotten off the ground. I'm very excited, we're doing pretty well. B-rank in the preliminaries." His face lit up with near tangible excitement. "But my two star pilots are Leena Toros of the old Blitz team, and Dan Bryant from…well…from more teams than I care to count."

"I know Dan," said Marina, "We were on the Howlers together about four years ago. He was _with_ Leena Toros, wasn't he?"

"Precisely," Mark replied, somewhat dejectedly. "'Was' is the key word. They split up over some gambling problem he had and now they barely say a word to each other. And when they do, it's some immature, uncalled for, irrelevant pot-shot about their sex life! I mean, this is the ZBA, not a damn soap opera! And to top it all off, I've just spilled all sorts of personal secrets that aren't even my business to a complete stranger!" Mark ran his fingers through his hair before resting his forehead in his hands. It was an effort to keep from tears. His one shot at the big-time, his life-long dream of professional Zoid pilotry, and it was more than he could do to keep it falling apart around him.

Marina put a hand on his knee and leaned in close. "Listen," she said, with a kind, soothing voice. "I know things can get rough when you're just getting into the big-time. But if I know Dan, and I do, he'll shape up before long; he needs this as much as you do. As for Leena, she's probably just hurt, bad. Dan has a tendency to do that on and off the field, fortunately, never to me. I think they'll have no choice but to get over themselves if they want anyone to take your team seriously. It'll be alright, you'll see."

Mark was convinced, but more than that, he was relieved. This perfect stranger had just come up and assured him that he was doing everything right, and it felt good. Their eyes met, and he noticed that she hadn't taken her hand off of his knee. He placed his hand on hers.

"Thank you," he said. "I ought to talk to strangers more often."

"We're not strangers anymore, remember?" she said. Touching his knee lightly again, she got up and headed for the door. Mark made to stop her.

"Wait," he said, somewhat urgently. "Will I see you around?"

Marina smiled a bit. "I think so. You're facing us in two battles."

The door slid shut behind her as she left the room, and Mark felt as though he'd just run a mile. He walked without thinking back to his room, unknowingly ignored several questions, comments, teases and jeers from Dan and Shawn, and fell asleep before his head hit the pillow.

It was a little after one o'clock in the morning, and Leena was still awake, fully dressed, and showing very few signs of tiring. She was slowing down for the night, but not quite ready to turn in just yet. The boys had turned in only a half an hour before, after a night of getting grease on their clothes and callusing their hands on wrenches and bolts, and otherwise getting their hands dirty. Shawn snored too much for any walking around to wake him up. Marks quarters were on the other side of the transport, as were her fathers. Knowing Dan, he slept like a rock, so Leena didn't have much to worry about in the way of keeping people up. She kicked off her flip-flops and put her feet up on a table. Clutching her mug of coffee in one hand, she picked up the remote control in the other and began flipping through channels on the television to find that there was nothing worth watching.

Leena didn't bother to put her flip-flops back on, as she was on her way to bed and would surely shed them again in five minutes. The floor was cold under her feet as she made her way down the ninth floor hallway. She was relieved to find warmth in the carpeted floor as she turned slowly into Dan's room. It had been five weeks since he'd asked her to join the Armory team. For the past four weeks they'd all been sleeping in the same building. Finally, for the past two weeks, Leena had been checking on Dan every night before she went to sleep herself. She knew full well that nothing could get to him in here, even if someone or something wanted to get at him in the first place.

_This is ridiculous_, Leena thought, sitting lightly on the foot of Dan's bed. _I can't stand Dan.__ Why do I keep doing this?_ She knew that wasn't true. She was hurt, true, but a big part of her was still very much in love with Dan. That's why she'd joined the team in the first place. When Mark and Shawn needed a fourth pilot, Dan's mind went straight to her, instead of any of the other more than capable pilots that could be picked up at the ZBA betting hall. Maybe he felt the same. Maybe he wanted her back in his life too. There were a lot of maybes.

Leena was shaken out of her daydream by a slight movement in the mattress. Looking up a bit, she saw that Dan was tossing a bit. She moved up a bit towards him, put her coffee on his bedside table, and took his hand. Surprisingly, he grasped it very tightly. Leena could see that whatever was bothering him in his dreams was big, because he began to cry ever so slightly. With her free hand, she brushed the bangs out his face and moved in very close. "Ssssssssh," she coaxed him, in barely more than a whisper. She stroked the side of his face and gently kissed his lips. He stopped tossing and smiled a bit.

Dan slept quietly through the night.


	3. Chapter 3: Combat

Zoids: Armory Team

By The Fraternal Brothers

Okay, we're not disclaiming anything you could have found disclaimed in previous chapters. If you have not read the disclaimer, go back and read it. We're not joking man. Do it.

Three: Combat

The next morning, Doc, Mark, Shaun, and Leena were conversing and breakfasting around the table in the headquarters' main kitchen when Dan walked in to a round of greetings of various stages of wakefulness. It suddenly clicked with those seated that Dan was clutching a pink, half-full mug of coffee. Leena looked down and ate somewhat more quickly. Dan placed the cup in the sink and left in the direction of the showers. Mark made a small gagging noise undetected by the others at the table.

The rest of the morning passed uneventfully, mostly because Dan and Leena didn't see each other at all since then. Under Doc's guidance, Shaun and Leena sparred in the training simulator while Dan and Mark looked over the Culling Team's dossier, formulating a plan for defeating them. During their discussion, Dan asked Mark, "Shaun doesn't talk much, does he?"

Mark chuckled. "You just noticed that?" Dan glared at him. "Well, I just noticed you don't like to be condescended."

"Back to my question."

"He pretty much eats, sleeps, and fights. You're kinda lucky he's been joking with you all this time."

Mark remained somewhat distracted throughout the morning, as he knew at any point Dan and Leena could be in the same room. And it was inevitable that Dan and Leena would have to be in the same room for the official briefing.

That afternoon after lunch, the inevitable happened. And not in a controlled environment as Mark would have preferred, instead in a corridor by the simulator. Mark was walking to his room, taking the quick route, which just happened to down this hallway. As he turned the corner into this hallway, he noticed the Leena go down it, presumably to go to the simulator as Dan came out of it. Mark quickly ducked back behind the bend and listened, ready to step in if the situation became too hostile.

To Mark's dismay, but also his relief, there was no exchange of unpleasantries, no yelling, no cursing, no stomping off in a fuss. As a matter of fact, there was hardly a glance spared. Dan looked at Leena briefly and expressionlessly, and Leena ducked her head a bit and kept walking in the opposite direction. Mark thought that, overall, it was uncharacteristic of Dan, but assumed it best not to inquire for once. This instinct was one of the few that Mark chose to ignore.

"Wow," Mark breathed upon making sure Leena was out of earshot. "You could cut the tension with a knife back there, huh?" Dan simply let out an exasperated breath and wiped some sweat from his brow.

"Yeah, you could," he remarked, still expressionless, and walked away.

The next day Dan was back to his old self. He practically skipped into the living room at seven o'clock in the morning when the team was scheduled to move their respective Zoids into the transport. The transport was a marvel of modern engineering in and of itself. It was approximately 400 feet tall and long, and a good 100 feet wide. It was shaped like a giant snail with a blue cylindrical shell and a white body comprising the snail's head and foot. The "shell" of the snail was a full foot of steel which housed a mechanism rather similar to a Ferris wheel, only for Zoids. Its unique design, the brainchild of Dr. Toros himself, allowed for eight Zoids to be carried in the cargo bay. A motor in the center enabled the mechanism to be rotated completely in a matter of twenty minutes. Two Zoids at a time could be worked on in the twin upper and lower maintenance decks where the shell met the head, which was essentially the part of the body that lacked treads.

Any humans that happened to be on board, however, were met with significantly less accommodating conditions, as the transport's living space occupied only twelve vertical feet of the "head's" two-hundred-and-sixty-foot height (it took a considerable amount of engine to move this giant snail). While the rooms were by no means cramped, it was difficult at best to find any privacy. There was one bedroom with eight beds which were little more than apertures in the wall, a kitchen with a needlessly large pantry and two bathrooms. It wasn't quite homey, but a team could live well in it for months at a time if need be.

It would take roughly five days for the Armory team transport to reach their destination. By day three of their journey, there was desert on all sides for hundreds of miles around. Their starting location of Dendurium City was hopelessly far behind, and the refuge of its forests (of which there were few on planet Zi) and the cool shade they offered seemed hopelessly far behind.

Boredom was not quite a strong enough word for the general mood aboard the transport. Shaun was the only person who said much, and that was due largely to the fact that he slept for roughly eighty percent of the trip.

Dr. Toros was a brilliant man in just about every sense of the word, but even he needed to rest occasionally, so from the hours of ten o'clock p.m. to eight o'clock a.m., he had assigned Dan and Leena to take the controls—together. Dan suspected that Doc wanted to force him and Leena to overcome their differences the easy way _before_ an opposing team made them do it the hard way, but he was still reluctant to oblige him. They really didn't have much say in the matter, as Dr. Toros was Leenas father and Dan's boss. Still, he never told them they had to like it, and their joint shift went by with little more than a grumble of acknowledgement from either.

Mark could be found, more often than not, reading any of a multitude of murder mystery novels he'd brought along. When he wasn't doing that however, he would opt to take the controls from Dr. Toros during the day so that he could secretly use the computers for his own purposes while occasionally tweaking the navigational controls so the transport didn't wind up in the middle of bandit country by mistake.

Mark's purposes usually included trying repeatedly, in vain, to establish a connection with the Nitrous team's transport module, in hopes of talking to Marina again. The Nitrous team used the world's only troglodytic transport, and as such, when it was battle season, it was particularly difficult to establish or maintain a connection, as they were constantly on the move two miles underground.

One day however, Mark managed to establish a connection with the Nitrous Team. His heart raced in anticipation of Marina picking up the transmission.

Unfortunately, it was a man with black, spiky hair kept up with an orange cloth band that did. He sneered as he asked, "Who is this? Whaddya want?"

Mark felt a good degree of confidence sucked out of him as his thoughts raced. He hadn't considered the possibility that it would be someone other than Marina on the other side of the videophone. And why was he being so rude? Was this his personality or was this the way older teams treated greenhorns? He figured he should just ask and hope this guy relented.

"Um, I'm Mark Sanders from the Armory Team. I'm, uh, looking for Marina. Is she available?"

"Not right now," the man said with the same impoliteness. "She's busy."

"Rick!" said a familiar voice. "Down boy." Mark saw Marina walk chuckling into the frame, a welcome relief from this Rick person. "There's a problem with the Saber Fang's leg again. I need you to check it out." She watched him leave and carried on. "Mark, is that you? How're you doing?"

"Better than last time, I'll say that." Marina smiled. There always seemed to be something reassuring about her smile, something that seemed to alleviate all his stress at once. "We're on our way to fight the Culling Team. You?"

"We're fighting the Luna Team in two days." She paused. "You caught a tough break, I think, facing the Culling Team in your first battle." Mark's face fell noticeably. Marina seemed to pick up on that, adding, "You'll do all right. Dan's a solid pilot and I know Leenas a good shot. You know about Elliot, right?" Mark nodded. "Keep him busy and you'll do fine."

"All right, thanks."

"Y'know, I've spoken with Elliot before," Marina continued. "He's, well, weird. He's really weird, but in a funny sort of way. You can probably talk to him after the battle. It'll make your day, I swear."

"You've already made it." He grinned. Marina was clearly flattered. "So where are you right now?" he continued, not wanting to lose the conversation for the sake of flirting.

"To be perfectly honest, I don't know," Marina confessed. "I know we're en route to sector 9G, but I don't know where we are precisely. Give me one second, I'll find out." Marina turned away from the screen for a moment. "Here we go," she said, turning back. "We're currently in sector eleven, and our coordinates are…61, 88."

Mark checked his own location. "Hey, I'm headed to 9G as well, southeast quadrant. You'll probably drive right under us!"

"Nah," Marina replied. "It's all solid rock from here to 7G, so we're covering it all on the surface."

"Well," Mark said, "if I see a giant mechanical badger, I'll flash the headlights." He was glad to see that Marina laughed politely at his stupid jokes. "Listen," he added, "if you aren't doing anything after you've dealt with the Luna team, we should go get some coffee or something."

"Definitely," she affirmed. "Oh, I hate to go but I have a lot of work to finish on the Saber Fang. It's been great talking to you."

"Yeah," Mark said, "I'll see you soon." Marina blew a kiss and the transmission went dead. Breathless, Mark pumped his fists in the air and spun in his chair for a couple of revolutions.

The remainder of the trip passed uneventfully. The Armory Team's transport arrived at the battlefield early in the fifth day of the trip. Mark took this opportunity to brief the team on the tactics they would be using for this battle. His teammates sat in a half circle, and he noticed that Shaun was in the middle. The table around which they sat was grey metal with a glass pane on top, out of which several images were projected, rotating very slowly. One was a giant Gorilla Zoid, another looked like a buffalo of sorts, and a third Zoid resembled a Dimetrodon. All three of these Zoids had gratuitous amounts of artillery strapped to them wherever it would fit.

"The Culling team uses an Iron Kong, a DiBison and a Heldigunner. The latter two are piloted by your average, run-of-the-mill, dime-a-dozen Zoiders." Mark held up a tiny remote and pressed a button. The Gorilla shrank down into a corner and the other two Zoids began to spin more quickly as they enlarged to take up the now vacant space. They only occupied this space for a very short time, and when the Gorilla came back, the other two left the projection entirely.

"The Iron Kong, however, is not. Elliot Handel is the pilot, and he is currently ranked number four in the world in Zoid piloting. Fortunately for us, his implosive personality prevents him from forming a team of pilots that are even remotely on par with his skill. That does not, I repeat NOT make him less of a threat. In fact, more often than not, the mediocrity of his teammates serves to lull enemies into a false sense of security, after which he has been known to decommission entire teams with little or no help from said teammates."

Mark held up the tiny remote and pressed another button. The arms of the Iron Kong lit up in blue on the bicep, the tops of the forearms, and at the knuckles.

"Handel has had some custom modifications made. After he lost his championship match four years ago because of a Zoid that managed to get him in melee range, he set out to design a…remedy…if you will." Mark pressed another button and portions of the Iron Kong's chest and back lit up in green. Connecting the green portions to the blue were lines of red that nearly covered its upper arms.

"What you see in green are tanks of water--thousands of gallons of it. It travels through the super-heated pipes, highlighted in red, to the blue-highlighted vents where it escapes at ridiculous speeds, propelling the fists of the Iron Kong. Contact with these could total your Command Wolf, Dan." Shaun became very concerned suddenly.

"Is that legal?" he spat.

"Technically, no," Mark began, "but when he proposed these designs to the Zoid Battle Commissioner, he was very convincing. And he seemed to believe he had disproved any possibility of being told 'no.'"

"So," Leena added, the usual cheerfulness conspicuously absent from her voice, "We focus all our attention of the Iron Kong? Or do we take out the 'Bison and the 'Gunner in favor of a strategy where we remove the distractions?" Mark gave her a discouraged look.

"It's really not that easy." He said. "If his co-pilots were really awful, we could do either one of those. As it stands, we're going to have to use the one strategy that never works, and split up." A collective groan rose from the team. "I know," he added. "But this is the only strategy I can think of that doesn't end in costly repairs and a loss of rank. So Leena, you are going to immediately engage the Iron Kong while Shaun provides you with cover fire. Dan, you should be able to dispatch the Heldigunner and DiBison with relative ease."

With spirits low, the team dispatched. No one said another word to each other in the six hours between the briefing and the match, but everyone felt the same nervousness.

As the clouds of dust swirled up around the ankles of Dan's Command Wolf, he couldn't help but fidget a bit in his seat. This was the first legitimate match he'd fought in almost two years, and he was going up against a Zoid custom-built and piloted by the number four Zoid pilot in the world. Dan took a bit of comfort in remembering that he had once been number seven in the world, and in knowing that he had the voice of a promising tactitian in his ear via radio broadcast, giving him tips.

The Armory Team was quite a sight standing side-by-side. Dan and the Command Wolf stood on the far right with Shaun and the Dark Horn in the middle and Leena in the Gun Sniper on the left.

There was a gentle but unmistakable tone that sounded in the cockpits of the Zoids as it turned two o'clock PM. This marked the five minute warning. Although the Culling team's Zoids were almost too far away to see, what shapes could be made out from across the distance visibly came to life at the sound of the tone.

It couldn't be seen from the planet, but somewhere up in orbit over planet Zi, the Zoid Battle Commission satellite had dropped a capsule directly onto the center of the battle area. Out of this capsule sprang a vaguely humanoid looking robot judge, which laid the terms of the battle out through similar radio broadcasting for the sake of having it mentioned on the official record. 

"This is a battle officially sanctioned by the Zoid Battle Commission. All unauthorized personnel within a five-mile radius must clear the area. Battle mode zero-zero-one-one. The Culling Team versus the Armory Team. Ready...FIGHT!"

As soon as the transmission was complete, the Culling Team charged across the five mile expanse. Shaun was the first to oblige his opponents, his Zoid humming to life eagerly. Dan shortly followed suit as Leena tailed Shaun directly. The Command Wolf sped off ahead of its colleagues, leaving a trail of dust behind the blurred feet on which it moved. Dashing in and out of enormous boulders, Dan quickly advanced on the Heldigunner, which had broken off from the Iron Kong and DiBison.

After a solid minute Leena saw through clouds of dust that the Iron Kong had stopped moving. It seemed to be waiting for her to attack it first, and she certainly wasn't about to pass that up. A few more seconds and she'd be in close enough range to hit Elliot with the .47's. They were peashooters, but all she needed was a distraction, something to make him turn the windshield wipers on (figuratively speaking, of course) while she readied the big guns. She hadn't given much thought to how she'd dodge Elliot's missiles, but she'd cross that bridge when she came to it.

Shaun was doing his best to lay down cover fire over the Iron Kong for Leena, both of whom were now within five-hundred yards, but the DiBison wouldn't stop provoking him. It was shelling his Dark Horn relatively hard, given its low capacity for heavy artillery, but the Dark Horn wasn't giving in, and barely showed a scratch for its trouble. He managed to flip the 'Bison on its back with a well placed rocket to the midsection. After that it sped off, presumably to go give Dan a hard time.

Once Shaun's attention was once again focused on his mission, he noted that things were not going well. The Iron Kong hadn't even started using its steam conduits, and was already demolishing Leena in the Gun Sniper. Elliot had pinned her against a boulder with one hand and was disassembling her Zoid with the other. The guns on the tail of her Zoid were gone, as was most of the shielding. Shaun launched just about everything he had at the 'Kong, but it barely teetered where it stood.

At that moment, Shaun, Leena, and Elliot were all distracted by an explosion on their left. The tail of the Heldigunner came flying towards them, and crushed the hind leg of the Dark Horn. Forth from the giant fiery explosion that had been the Culling Heldigunner came Dan in the Command Wolf. Vents had opened in the legs and sides of the body to allow air to pass through more easily, and he was going easily as fast as a standard scarlet Liger.

Dan saw Leena getting pummeled by the great Ape. It now had her in two enormous iron hands, held above its head, ready to fire the two biggest ZBC Legal rockets in the world at her without even having to aim them. The midsection of her Gun Sniper was crushed. The head of the Zoid was directly over the rockets. Dan knew that pilots weren't supposed to aim for the head of the Zoid, and was sure Elliot simply thought he was aiming at the body, but knew this was going to end badly if those rockets fired. Leena would be in a wheelchair for months, if she was lucky.

Lights lit up all over the rocket on the left, signaling that it was about to fire. Dan wasn't going to be able to stop them firing, or knock the Zoid over. He was simply too small in his nimble little Command Wolf. He raced forward, reaching the Kong just a half a second after the rocket engaged. Using the Zoids hind legs, he propelled himself off of the wrecked Dark Horn and clamped his Wolf's jaws over the head of the missile.

In a matter of half a second Dan saw everything between the back of the Iron Kong and the ground behind it. He braced for impact, as there was no way he was getting out of this one clean. The missile carried him about eighty feet up into the air before his weight dragged it off course, and brought it to the ground five-hundred feet behind it's owner, and its fiery conclusion.

"DAN!" came the frantic voice in his ear. "DAN? CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" It was Mark.

"Yes, yes," Dan grumbled, as if he'd just been woken from a lovely nap. "I hear you, Christ."

"Dan, listen to me. If you and your Zoid can still move at all, you'd best get back over to that Kong and keep fighting. Leena's still in trouble. Handel's pissed off that his attack missed and he's whaling on the Gun Sniper harder than ever."

If he were to be perfectly honest, Dan wasn't quite sure he could get over there at all. His computer was reading that the front right leg was completely gone. Still, he had to do something. Even if his teammate's health and hundreds of thousands of credits worth of machinery weren't at stake, it just wasn't in his nature not to do something. So he coaxed all the speed he could out of the three legs he still had, and prepared to launch off of the Dark Horn again.

To Dan's dismay, Shaun had either carried the Dark Horn off in shame, or Elliot had swept it aside in fury, but either way it was not there. Dan sprung from the regular old ground this time, aiming for the neck of the Iron Kong. Time seemed to slow down a bit for Dan there, looking out of his cockpit to see the Kong from behind. He could clearly see that he was losing speed, and was not going to sever any power from the head to the arms like he had hoped.

He missed the neck entirely and the Command Wolf's razor sharp steel teeth chomped right down into the shoulder of the Iron Kong. Dan released the lever to open the Command Wolf's jaws, but found it quite stuck. He was dangling from the shoulder of his enemy, and none of the three Zoids that were currently intertwined there could move. Elliot shook as much as he could but it didn't do much. All it managed to do was rattle the hind legs of the Command Wolf, as it hung there, unable to be of further use.

Suddenly, Dan felt a lurch as gravity pulled his Zoid down about four feet. Its teeth dragged across the top and bottom of the Iron Kong's shoulder, severing dozens of steam conduits as they went. The steam escaped all at once, uncontrolled by Elliot, until the entire arm was being propelled away from the Zoid, and it was only attached by the core steel beams, and the fuel injection conduits. Within seconds, these too snapped, and the arm of the Iron Kong exploded off of its body with a force that knocked it to the ground instantly, crushing what was left of the Gun Sniper under it.

Leena braced herself for the impact of falling seventy feet in a giant sardine can. It wasn't as bad as she thought. Reflexively, she checked to see if any of her Zoids navigational or operational systems were online—they weren't. She looked out of her cockpit to assess the immediate situation and saw, to her horror, the arm of the Iron Kong—Dan's three-legged Command Wolf in tow—careening out of sight behind a giant boulder. An enormous pillar of ash and soot preceded the explosion by about half of a second. The Command Wolf was totaled for sure, and Dan would be lucky if he wasn't.

Five hundred yards away Shaun sat in his wrecked Zoid and thought for a moment.

_This really sucks._

"I can't believe this!" Mark shouted on his way into the hospital room. Dan and Leena were in two beds next to each other. Leena had a bandage around her head, several visible scrapes and bruises on her arms and face, three cracked ribs, and both her ankles sprained. Dan had a similar bandage on his head, additionally covering one eye, a large gash across his chest, two cracked ribs, and a broken wrist.

"Ssh!" Dr. Toros scolded him, "Level three concussions are bad enough headaches without you adding to them." Mark added dejected to the list of negative emotions he was feeling at that moment.

"I still say it's bull that they gave the match to the Culling team," he huffed.

"Rules are rules." Dan groaned from his uncomfortable hospital bed. "That bastard in the DiBison was technically still standing when it all went to hell."

"When did you wake up?" asked Shaun from his seat by the window. He'd been sitting there for almost two days, the only pilot who hadn't sustained major injuries from that battle.

"About an hour ago." Dan winced. "What's the damage, Doc?" Dr. Toros gave him a sober look.

"The Gun Sniper and Dark Horn are nothing we can't fix with three weeks. ZBC technicians deal with these things all the time, albeit on a much smaller scale." Dan was glad to hear that.

"Why the long face then, doc?" He asked.

"Your Wolf," he began. "I'm afraid it's beyond fixing." Dan sat straight up, nearly screamed with pain and sank back down, angrily.

"My Zoid is totaled after one damn battle?!" He looked like he was about ready to cry.

"Dan, please, restrain yourself. You'll wake up everyone in the ward, least of all her." Shaun said, jerking his head toward Leena. "That's not the worst part. My Dark Horn will be combat ready again by the end of the month, and so will the Gun Sniper, but if you don't have a Zoid ready within thirty days we'll have to forfeit for the season. I can't lend you my Pteras because you aren't flight licensed. Do you have any other way of getting a Zoid? I don't care if it's a Liger Nine, we just need something that runs and shoots."

Dan thought for a minute. "Mark, is my car here?"

"Yeah," Mark replied, "ZBC rep brought it here this morning. Can you give us some info here please?"

"Visitor hours are almost over, you guys should go." Dan said, completely ignoring the very important question. "I'll call you when I find out for sure."

Once everyone had filed out of the room and was safely down the hallway, Dan spent five full minutes easing himself out bed. He glanced over at Leena, still asleep, probably for a few more days. He grabbed a pen and pad off of the side table and scrawled a note.

Leena,

Did all I could. Sorry you got banged up.

Tell anyone who asks that I went to sector 4D.

See you before the 30th.

Love, always

Dan

Dan hobbled out of the room, down to the parking lot, and into his car, which had previously been in the back of the transport, underneath the Zoid bay. Dr. Toros, Mark and Shaun were all climbing into Mark's convertible when they saw the blur of Dan speeding past them in his forest green off-roader, out of the field hospital grounds, and across the desert.


	4. Chapter 4: Aftermath

Zoids: Armory Team

By The Fraternal Brothers

Okay, if you're reading this little piece where we usually put our little disclaimer, skip down to the chapter title. We are in no way making the disclaimer again, instead preferring to make little notes about not putting in the disclaimer that already exists in chapter one. Like this one. Look, you read the disclaimer in some form or another, if not in our story, then in someone else's. There's really no point in us putting a disclaimer in at this point in the story.

* * *

Four: Aftermath

After leaving Shaun and Doc at the transport, Mark drove off to the local betting hall in a nearby outpost. He saw Marina seated at a table not far from the door and walked over to her, quickly sitting down. "Hey," he said trying as hard as he could to sound enthused.

"Don't tell me nothing's wrong this time," Marina responded, injecting a tone that was at once uplifting and playfully condescending.

"Am I that obvious?" Mark smiled weakly, then his face fell again. "I won't. The Culling Team won and Elliot's Iron Kong left the Command Wolf totaled, the Dark Horn and Gun Sniper heavily damaged, and Dan and Leena hospitalized." He sighed heavily.

Marina sat there, mouth agape. "You're kidding." Mark shook his head. "Oh man… that's terrible!" She paused, easing her expression a good deal, reaching out to touch his shoulder. "You'll get a win soon, though, don't worry."

The winning combination of physical contact and words of encouragement seemed to alleviate much of Mark's stress, as he smiled and said, "But not against your team, right?" The two of them shared a chuckle. "Oh, speaking of which, how'd you do?"

"Against the Luna Team? It was practically no contest. Oh, um, hope that doesn't make you jealous." Mark shook his head. He quickly ordered a cup of coffee, Marina following suit. "Rick's Black Rhimos lost a foot from some enemy fire early on, but that was pretty much all the damage we took."

"Lucky," Mark sighed. "You want to know how we lost? Bob Douglas in the Culling Team's DiBison chickened out, so it was standing when the rest of us were out of commission!" Mark's chin came to rest on his right fist, giving him a dejected look. He had, after all, desperately wanted to be in the battle, to give the Culling team a piece of his mind, and felt personally responsible for not being able to do anything about it.

Marina looked shocked. "Is that valid? Isn't there some kind of ordinance or some—"

"There isn't." Mark interrupted. "I checked. As long as he was within firing range for the majority of the battle, it's totally legal, and Leena had just had her Gun Sniper outfitted with long range nines." Mark looked more depressed than ever. "It doesn't make any sense, why would she be shooting at the god damn DiBison seven hundred yards away, when she's being pummeled in the face by the Iron Kong?" Mark scowled.

"I hate technicalities," Marina agreed.

"I know! It's disgraceful!" A voice unfamiliar to Mark interrupted ostentatiously. It belonged to a man with curly brown hair and the beginnings of chin stubble. His features were blunt but very pronounced, and despite his singular eyebrow he was altogether an attractive guy. He wore a red shirt and jeans that were rolled up once or twice, as well as a pair of stained mechanics' gloves. "Your team definitely deserved to win. I mean, the number you did on my Iron Kong was something, and my other pilots are nothing, and when you consider –"

"Wait a minute…_you're_ Elliot Handel?" Mark asked, completely incredulous at this strange turn of events. "I thought you would be some sort of violent sociopath in a straight jacket!"

"I tend to have that effect on people." Elliot laughed. "Not to sound arrogant, but I didn't get to be in the elite ranks by coming off as the mild-mannered accountant type. Oh, I need to give you this," he said, handing Mark a small rectangle of paper. Turning it over, Mark noticed it was a business card. "I spoke briefly with Dr. Toros earlier but didn't have one on me at the time. Could you see that he gets it?" He glanced down to notice his phone was going off. "I have to go. I had no idea this thing was on!" Elliot walked away, chuckling to himself about some unknown joke or another.

Mark didn't return to the transport until nearly ten o'clock that night. He and Marina had lost track of time; they had stayed for nearly five hours until Mark made a casual glance outside and noticed a distinct lack of sunlight. He excused himself hastily, but not before half-stuttering out his approval of an invitation by Marina to train in a week or so. Shortly after returning, Mark placed Elliot's business card on Doc's desk and went to bed sufficiently satisfied with the day's events.

The subsequent few days passed with without much major incident. Leena remained hospitalized, Dan remained absent, Doc remained in his office, and Mark and Shaun remained listless as they waited for the repairs on the Dark Horn and the Gun Sniper. On the fourth day, Leena was discharged from the hospital and on the sixth, Mark departed for the Nitrous Team's headquarters. On the seventh day, a mostly-repaired Iron Kong was lifted into the transport.

"You mean you actually HIRED this guy!" Leena yelled at her father as Elliot was loading the Iron Kong. "This is the same guy who wrecked our Zoids and cost us the first match!"

Dr. Toros scratched his head as he tried to calm her down. "Well, we need another pilot," he ventured. "We should have the Gun Sniper and Dark Horn back by the next battle, but Mark says that neither he nor Gyzak is ready and there's no telling how long Dan will be out there in…what sector was it, 4D? There's definitely no telling."

Leena frowned. This was going to be a long couple days, or however long it would take for the Gun Sniper and Dark Horn to be finished. She decided to sit down and mope a while until Elliot came up from the cargo bay.

The next thing Leena heard after the elevator's sliding door closing was Elliot's voice. "Hello," he said in a simple sing-song voice.

"What do you want?" Leena snapped.

If Elliot detected any of the harshness laden throughout her comment, he didn't show it. "I'm gonna get some water before I go work on the Iron Kong. Can I get anything for you?"

"You can get out for me."

"All right," Elliot responded simply after having picked up a glass from the counter and tapping the sink for water. He gulped it down quickly and placed the glass in the sink. "You wouldn't happen to have a cannon laying around, would you?"

"For what?" Leena asked suspiciously.

"To replace the arm that shot off during the fight," he replied, a hint of glee in his voice. Elliot left for the elevator, and as soon as the doors closed, Leena stood up and limped over to the sink to pour herself a glass of water. She spent most of the afternoon and evening alone in the command room, sulking. She knew it wasn't really Elliot joining the team that bothered her, but she wasn't quite sure of what was.

At around eleven she curled up in the chair behind the navigation console and engaged the autopilot for the evening. Not quite ready to turn in just yet, she sat in the chair with a cup of coffee and a book for a little light reading. Before long it was 1 a.m.

"Ffffffsssssssssssshhhhhhttttttttttffff," Sounded the static scratch for the communications console. Leena walked over to the small screen ten feet away, wishing that the monitor wasn't the only source of light in the room. Leena smartly tapped a few buttons, changing the frequency and honing in on the foreign signal. She suddenly became very aware of the cold steel floor on her bare feet as Dan's face came into sharp focus. His hands were occupied, and from the background of the image, she assumed he was at the controls of a Zoid. The camera angle indicated that it was sitting on his lower left. He freed one hand to tap the microphone on his headset before he began to speak.

"Sorry I didn't tell anyone I was leaving, Doc, but I knew you'd never hear of it. My current location is as follows: Sector 5G of Gamma Quadrant, coordinates are sixty-four, forty-one. My bearing is northeast, and at my current rate of speed I should be able to intercept you at approximately fourteen-hundred hours on Wednesday. Do you copy?" Leena fidgeted uncomfortably.

"Um, sorry Dan. It's me. Let me get a pen." she said, in a tone just barely audible. Walking away from the console to find a pen she wondered briefly why she was so shy all of a sudden. Was it that she hadn't spoken to Dan one-on-one in months without yelling? Was it because he had suddenly assumed a sober and humorless demeanor? Was it because he'd risked his life on the battlefield for someone who professed to hate him? She'd stopped dead in her tracks and become lost in thought. Realizing that it was all three, she quickly and embarrassedly walked back over to the screen.

"Is Dr. Toros there?" Dan said, eyes locked on the windshield.

"He is," Leena said. "But he's asleep."

"What, is he sick?" Dan replied.

"Dan, it's one in the morning." Leena saw Dan's eyes dart briefly to his console.

"Wow." He breathed. "I've been on the road for almost thirty hours." His face went, unblinking, right back to looking out the windshield.

"Well, um, what was that information you wanted me to take down?" Leena asked, trying not to betray any sort of nerves. The reality was that seeing Dan acting so serious was just…unsettling.

"Oh, nothing." Dan replied. "I don't really know the exact way to get back, so I'm playing it by ear. I wanted Dr. Toros to calculate some alternate trajectories for me, to see if there was a faster way back, maybe some terrain I should avoid. But that requires a program only he has the password for, so just tell him I'll see him on Wednesday." Dan made a motion as if to end the transmission.

"Wait!" Leena gasped. This finally drew Dan's attention. As he turned his head and adjusted the screen she could see his right eye, swollen up now and a bit bloody. She realized now why he hadn't faced the screen. It was stitched up in a do-it-yourself fashion, and the surrounding area was a rich purple.

Dan quickly turned his head back to hide the wound.

"I'm, uh, I--" Started Leena but she didn't know where to go from there. There was a ten-second silence. Dan was the first to speak.

"If this is about the match, don't mention it. The Command Wolf was on its way out anyway." Dan winced as he shifted gears with his self-splinted right wrist.

"Well, it's just…" Leena attempted again. "You're pretty banged up, are you okay?"

"This is nothing." Dan said, unable to control another slight wince. "When I was nineteen I joined my brother James' team, The Steel Fist team, and there was a faulty washer in my Liger Four's engine chamber. Whole Zoid went up in flames. I woke up six weeks later and--"

"Couldn't move your legs," Leena finished.

"Yeah," Dan sighed, remembering having told the story before.

"Listen," Leena started. "I just—the other day, when you came out to breakfast—"

"The coffee cup?" he said. Leena didn't say anything. "It's alright." The silence was tense. "I'm entering a militarized zone in about fifteen seconds, so I'm going to have to end the transmission. Judging by your bruises you should go to bed anyway."

The screen went black.

The next few hours went by in the cockpit of Dan's Geno Saurer without much activity. There was scarcely any noise at all, just the low hum of the fans and the distant scrape of motorized gears. Dan was finally coming up that militarized zone he had lied to Leena about earlier. He knew it was a cop-out, just a way to get off the com-lines quickly, but he didn't think he could stand a heart-to-heart right this second.

As he crossed the border into the zone, he could clearly see the base and several radar emplacements. One of the radar emplacements turned visibly to face him and a three Zoids that resembled miniature Pterases deployed from the highest point on the base. Dan slowed his Geno Saurer down and eventually stopped. It would be best to just comply with the command he knew was coming.

Sure enough the Pterases landed in a triangle formation around him, one at the back and the others flanking him in the front. The one on his right deployed a small land vehicle with two men inside it. Dan shut down the Geno Saurer and painfully made his way from the cockpit to the ground. One of the men stepped out of the car to speak with him.

"You're in a restricted military sector, son, do you know that?" the man barked.

"Restricted?" Dan replied, keeping the left side of his face to him as much as possible. "I didn't know that. I'm trying to make my way up to 9G, and this is right in my way, as the Pteras flies." The man seemed less than sympathetic.

"If you show me your Zoid piloting license and this Geno Breaker's registration papers, my men will happily escort you off of military premises."

"It's a Saurer." Dan muttered under his breath as he made his way back to the cockpit.

Dan shuffled around a bit in the cockpit to find that his registration papers were nowhere to be found. Suddenly it dawned on him. His papers were in the glove compartment of his car, which was in the care of his brother James…in sector 2A.

"Eheh, erm, funny story about the papers, actually," he said nervously. "I mean, I've got my license," Dan continued, pulling out a small card from his pocket, "and the Zoid's registry is up to date as far as I know," he gestured to a set of identification numbers painted on the Geno Saurer's underbelly, "but the actual registry papers are in my car, which is in 2A with my brother."

Even through the sunglasses and bushy moustache the man wore, Dan could tell the man was casting him a skeptical look. He looked up at the Geno Saurer and inspected the limited registry information, designed merely for the purposes of identifying the Zoid, not for divulging every last ounce of information about it. The man motioned for another to come forward. This man was certainly not as tall as the one to whom Dan was just speaking, even if he didn't slouch. What hair that hung out from under the bandana on his head was messy and colored dull beige. "Check the Zoid, inside and out."

The small man saluted and returned to his Zoid quickly. "This shouldn't take too long," he assured Dan upon returning with a small hover platform and a small rod that Dan recognized as a diagnostic rod. Taking the platform up to various points on the Geno Saurer, he inspected the cockpit, cannons, tail vents, and other places too numerous to list. His superior passed the time by scrutinizing Dan's Zoid battling license, looking for any potential fault with it. Dan had no such method of passing the time, so he merely twiddled his thumbs and frustrated himself by agonizing over how long it seemed to be taking for this mechanic to be running his inspection.

After what seemed like an age, the mechanic returned and whispered something to his superior. Upon hearing what the mechanic had to say, he waved him away and addressed Dan. "Well," he began, "it looks like everything checks out." Dan breathed a sigh of relief. "However…your ammunition doesn't seem to be completely up-to-date. Give us another thirty minutes to remove it all and you can be on your way."

"Whoa, hang on just one second!" Dan spat, throwing himself, arms spread, in front of the door to the Zoid. "Why the hell are you after my ammo?" The officer replied with frustrating composure.

"The most recent date on any round in your arsenal is eight years old. That violates the active ammunition code by seven years and four months. Once it gets to be more than a year old, ammo becomes hard to trace, easy to black market for people who aren't supposed to have it, catch my drift?" Dan scowled. "So," continued the officer, "Unless your registration appears magically within the next five seconds, we're taking your ammo."

"I've got to spend the next three days taking this thing up to 9G! Are you telling me I've got to do it without protection?"

"Well," said the officer, "it's three days without protection or three weeks waiting for your car to get out here, because you aren't taking this ammo on your Zoid."

Dan finally stood aside. He wasn't in any position to fight. Forty-five minutes later he was moving again, his load lightened from the removal of everything firearms-related from his cannon's particle charger to the bullets for his horn gun and the only thing he had gained was a small signed slip of paper telling any other military operatives that he was able to travel into all open areas of the militarized zone. At least his maximum speed was higher, maybe now he'd make it back by Tuesday.

The Geno Saurer continued to lumber through Sector 5G and finally passed south into 6G at around 10:00 that night. He judged that Doc would have handed the controls over to Leena by this point and called the transport about a half hour later, when he was certain he was clear of the military.

Again the static came. After a few seconds, he glanced down at the viewscreen with his left eye to see, of all people, Elliot Handel at the controls. "Elliot?" Dan was incredulous. "What are you doing here?"

"Dan Bryant?" Elliot paused pensively for a few seconds. "Oh yeah, I'm part of your team now!"

"What!" Dan exclaimed, turning to completely face the viewscreen.

"Hey, Leena had that same look on her face when she found out, except her eye wasn't messed up like that!"

Dan sighed. "I guess it can't be helped. Could you just take down that I'm in sector 6G…Delta Quadrant, coordinates are seventy-five, forty-three."

Elliot looked like he was writing something down as he mumbled to himself, "Seventy-five, forty…three." He turned his head to face Dan again. "Okay, I've got it."

"Thanks," Dan replied. "Hey, why are you driving? Normally it's Leena around this time."

"I relieved her," Elliot said simply. "She'd been going on twenty-one hours when I did. Doc is busy with something, and Shaun is helping him. She said something like, 'Any boat in a storm,' when I took over. I don't know what she means or anything but…"

Dan chuckled to himself. So that's how everyone's been getting along. Suddenly, an explosion rocked the ground nearby. A second viewscreen, this one a large hologram in the front of Dan's cockpit, revealed a burgundy-haired woman in a black jumpsuit and red body armor.

"This is Lieutenant Meila Seless of the Firebrand Organization. The explosion you just experienced was a warning shot. Set a course around this area immediately or the next shot won't miss."

"Listen," Dan replied. "I'm not a threat to whatever group you're a part of and I need to get through here as quickly as possible, so if you could just let me keep going straight-"

A second explosion hit just in front of the Geno Saurer. Dan grunted as he felt the shockwave from the blast. "This is your final warning," Meila said sternly. "Set a new course immediately."

Dan tensed his hands around the controls and ushered his Zoid forward, hoping the agility and armor of the Geno Saurer would protect him. He heard Leena and Elliot having a heated conversation on the first viewscreen, Leena sounding slightly panicked. The conversation ended abruptly and a quick glance showed Leena running into the elevator.

"Lieutenant!" shouted Dan, frantically aware of red flashing lights indicating an oncoming onslaught. "I don't have any ammunition!" Through the static he could make out a rough 'hold your fire' on his right, and a 'What? He doesn't have what?' on his left.

The lieutenant appeared once more on the viewscreen. Dan spoke before she had the chance to.

"Lieutenant," he began. "I have no ammunition, I have no alternate bearings to set a course _for_, and I have absolutely no reason no interfere in your Fire-whatever organization." Suddenly, a rush of binary code flooded the viewscreen in front of him.

"These co-ordinates will take you out of our sector and point you towards sector 7F. You will then make your way around sector 7G to reach your destination."

This wasn't quite good enough for Dan.

"That's impossible! I can't just go across! What about the canyons out that way that mark the border of the sector! I'll never cross them!"

"Then you'll just have to go around them." Meila said, with an indignant air.

"You don't understand!" Dan breathed, frustrated. "I have to be in 9G by Friday at the latest or my team is disqualified, and forfeits the season." But he received no reply. The screen was black. In the background behind Elliot, he could see Dr. Toros being led over to the screen by Leena.

"Is this true, Dan? You don't have _any_ ammunition? Where'd it all go?" Doc gasped, unbelieving.

"Yeah, it's true," Dan sighed. "Colonel something-or-other of Zi Special Operations Force Three relieved me of it, because I don't have this Zoid's papers on me."

"Why don't you have its papers?"

"I haven't piloted this Zoid in eight years, I had the papers in my car's glove box with the Command Wolf's but my car is with my brother back in 2A."

"What kind of Zoid is it, anyway?" Shawn piped up from the background.

"It's my old Geno Saurer." Dan growled. "I had custom rounds for the custom cannon on top too. It'll take forever to find someone who makes custom ammo for eight-year-old Saurers."

"Whoa, back up!" Shaun said. "You have a Geno Saurer?!"

"Yeah, but it doesn't do us much good." Dan said. "I just got forced to take a three week detour around this canyon up in the southeast. I can't get there by the thirtieth to fight the Nitrous team. There's no way."

"Dan," Said Elliot, "I know what you're talking about, and I think there just might be."


	5. Chapter 5: Strain

Zoids: Armory Team

By The Fraternal Brothers

Are you kidding us? Why are you still looking here for the disclaimer? If you want to read our disclaimer, go to chapter one and read it! We do not oblige disclaimer-whores.

Five: Strain

"You're serious, Elliot?" Dan was elated, or at least would be if Elliot actually had a way to avoid a three-week detour around a gorge while also staying clear of this Firebrand group, whatever it was. "What is it?"

"Well, it's strange…there's actually a way into that canyon with an exit a couple hundred kilometers away that they didn't factor into the directions at all. Oh, here's why!" He punched a few coordinates into the computer. "The entrance is property of ZiValhalla, Inc., but it isn't under any Zoid transit restrictions, so you should be able to go through."

"Sounds good. Send me the coordinates." After a minute or so of keying in a fresh set of coordinates, he turned his good eye to Elliot once more. "And how much time will this save me?"

"Counting the time it's already taken you, eh, two weeks, maybe a bit more. I don't know exactly; I didn't get to be in the elite ranks by being a cartographer."

"All right then. I'll see you Wednesday."

By that evening, Dan came upon a large corporate compound, almost like its own city. A large gate, almost as tall as Dan's Geno Saurer, stood before him. A middle-aged male face with smooth, easy features and a slightly receding hairline in a black suit greeted him on the large hologram screen in the front of his cockpit.

"Welcome to the main headquarters of ZiValhalla, Incorporated," the man said, a smile on his face and infinite ease in his voice. "You don't seem to have any registration with us, however. Would you kindly give us your name, occupation, and registry information?"

Dan looked back skeptically, but transmitted his information. While he was waiting for the transmission to complete, Dan asked, "Okay, while we're at it, who are you?"

"Ricard Darren Ares, MBA," the man said simply and proudly. "President, ZiValhalla, Incorporated." He paused, looking down, presumably at a computer screen. "And you, my friend, are Daniel Maxwell Bryant of B-Rank's Armory Team." He chuckled. "I didn't quite recognize you with that, well, unfortunate mishap around your face."

"And?"

"And you have met, arguably, your biggest fan." A gate slid open a couple hundred yards from the Geno Saurer. "Come in; you must have been traveling for a while."

"Um, thanks," Dan replied awkwardly. There was no denying, however, that he had been pushing himself too hard. His head was pounding, his muscles fatigued, his eyes strained (his good one, at least). He maneuvered the Geno Saurer to the opening in the gate and into the complex that was ZiValhalla headquarters. He remained somewhat skeptical, however. A "biggest fan?" Well, Dan _had_ been on a lot of teams in the past; this Ares character was bound to have heard of him. And this man could certainly afford to be his biggest fan. Dan looked no further into the matter and listened as Ares guided him toward the center of the complex.

He parked his Zoid, as Ares instructed, over a sign reading "ZiValhalla General Hospital." Dan walked inside and found a man with a thin layer of black hair and a thick, neat moustache in surgical garb standing in a wide doorway in the lobby. "Dan Bryant?" he asked simply. Dan nodded just as simply. "Dr. Mike Allan. Please follow me."

Dan did so, allowing Dr. Allan to lead him to an operating room (as evidenced by the sign "Operating Room 3"). Dan was instructed to lie down on the table and did so. "This will be quick," Dr. Allan told him. "All we're doing is repairing your eye, it's nothing serious, and we'll just make it able to heal better than what it currently can."

Dan detected the smell of antiseptic and felt it being rubbed on his arm. After a brief pause, he felt a nasty pinch in the same spot, biting his lip somewhat. Two minutes later, he was out cold.

Mark's Gyzak was trudging along sluggishly, a sign that it needed to go in for maintenance. He made a brief note of this, but there were other things on his mind. He couldn't quite see it yet, but his map showed that the Nitrous Team Headquarters were only about forty minutes away. Without engaging the view function on his comm. screen, Mark sent a brief voice message to the Nitrous Team.

"Mark Sanders," he began his index finger on the link button. "Captain of B-Class Armory Team, Pilot of Zoid Battle Commission Zoid 02330907071120502--I am currently within 100 kilometers of your base, with an estimated time of arrival of 43 minutes." Mark cheerfully noted the tiny bell-tone that sounded to assure that the transmission had been relayed.

After about two minutes, there had come no reply, and Mark was a bit restless. There wasn't really anything _established _between Marina and him, and he was growing paranoid that nothing would develop. Just as he was trying to assure himself that he would not have received an invitation to their base if this was the case, he heard the low-humming tone of a proposed video link. A couple of seconds of punching buttons to send the link to a small viewscreen to his right later, Marina's face appeared on the screen.

"Hey," Mark said. "How's it going?"

"It's going all right." Marina looked down and to her left. "Forty-three minutes for a hundred kilometers? Is the Gyzak okay?"

"Nothing some maintenance can't fix," Mark replied. "Thanks for your concern, though." He urged his Gyzak onward.

"I heard Elliot Handel actually joined your team," Marina said after a few seconds of silence. "That's a good sign you guys are going somewhere. He's been trying to get into S-Rank for quite some time, but his teammates on the Culling Team just dragged him down. Anyway, he had plans to join a team that could get him at least into A-Rank. And he picked you guys."

"He joined with us because he wants to leech off our success?"

Marina chuckled. "That's one way of putting it. But realize this is a leech that more than pulls its own weight."

Mark was still confused. "How does he think we'll get into A-Rank? We barely made B and lost our first match TO HIM."

"He joined because you guys have potential. You lost on a technicality, but if you look at the point totals, the Armory Team blew the Culling Team out of the water. You just need to improve your chemistry and you'll do wonderfully. And I've known Elliot since he was on the Krieg-Star Team about two years ago, he –"

"Wait. Elliot was on the Kriegers?" Mark asked, incredulously invoking the common informality of one of the best A-Rank teams in recent years. "_The_ Kriegers?"

"Yeah, but he jumped ship not long after they got into A-Rank. He said he got bored or something and made the Culling Team."

Mark sighed. "Wow." He paused. "What was that about the point totals?"

Marina smiled. "Why don't you do it yourself?" she said teasingly. Mark did, as for some reason there was no disobliging her. A quick search of the recent scores revealed that Leena had received fifteen points, Shaun twenty, and Dan forty. Comparatively, Elliot had received twenty-five points, the Heldigunner pilot zero, and the DiBison pilot five. He let out a long whistle. "I know. That's why Elliot joined up with you. And hey," Marina added, "you guys got beaten on pretty bad, but you'll pull through." She smiled warmly and was about to say something, but a high repetition of beeps interrupted her. "Reg is paging me. I gotta go. See you in a bit."

"Bye." The transmission cut out.

Forty minutes later, Mark was rapidly losing his patience with Reg. As it turned out, he had paged Marina to inform her that no combatants from teams in the same skill bracket as the Nitrous Team would be allowed on Nitrous Team premises within ten days of any match, as per a new rule instated that morning. Mark suspected more than anything else that this rule was Reg's way of playing the overbearing older brother, and he did not sympathize. All he knew for certain was that no amount of arguing would penetrate Reg's skull and that if he resisted much further, Reg could and would do him severe bodily harm.

As he dejectedly turned his Zoid around and started the three hour journey home, Mark was very disappointed. Reg did have a point, he supposed. It didn't do well to socialize with your opponent four days before you were scheduled to beat the stuffing out of him.

With that thought in his head, Mark began preparing mentally for the upcoming battle. It was his turn to draw up the strategy, and with four days to go, he only had a vague idea of how he wanted it to unfold. Perhaps it was because he was reluctant to willfully plot physical harm against Marina (with whom he was no longer even pretending he was not infatuated) that he hadn't drawn up any sort of concrete plan.

Driving that thought from his mind, he forced himself to think strategically. After all, it would make the ride home go by faster if he had something to think about. Because of her injuries, Leena would be sitting this one out. Fortunately, the ideal strategy for the coming battle did not rely _too_ heavily on long-range weapons, or Leena's absence would have been a definite issue. As it stood, however, Nitrous used a predominantly close-to-mid-range combination of Zoids.

Reg used a Hound Soldier, which, as the name suggests, resembled a dog covered in guns. Its bulky appearance belied its maneuverability, and therein laid the strength of the Nitrous team's strategy, at least insofar as progressing through earlier ranks was concerned.

The trick, Mark thought, would be to get the Black Rhimos, a long-range heavy artillery Zoid, occupied long enough to disable the Hound Soldier and Saber Fang. While the Saber Fang was not particularly impressive as a Zoid, Mark was fairly certain that Marina's skills as a pilot matched his own, and assigned Shaun to her accordingly, briefly shuddering at the thought of sending Elliot against her.

All that was left to decide was whether Mark should be charged with disabling the Rhimos and Dan the Hound, or vice-versa. Dan could certainly handle Reg one-on-one, in the Command Wolf, anyway. Mark wasn't so sure about how his Saurer would perform. Not only had Dan not piloted it for almost eight years, but it was fundamentally different from other Geno Saurers, and Dan was still injured, which would certainly affect his performance.

Mark decided to seek Dr. Toros' guidance on the matter, and continued back to headquarters.

Upon returning, Mark found Shaun and Dr. Toros shut away in some sort of debate and Elliot trying to explain his new, admittedly outlandish, idea to install a cannon as the Iron Kong's arm to anyone available, and given that Shaun and Doc were often out of the way, Leena was oft the unwilling target. Dan still hadn't returned, Elliot's more vital work on the Iron Kong was only halfway done, and Leena was ready to rip something's head off (more so than usual).

As he began to stretch out on a nearby sofa, a videophone let out its simple ring. Feeling apathetic, Mark tilted his head over the armrest toward the videophone and hit the large answer button thereon. Dan's surprisingly well-stitched face showed up on the monitor, and judging from the clarity and background of the image, Mark guessed Dan wasn't in his Zoid.

"Dan!" Mark exclaimed. Leena limped as quickly as she could over as Mark flipped himself to view the image right-side up. "Where are you?"

"It's nice to hear from you, too," Dan replied sardonically. "And to answer your question, the president of ZiValhalla invited me to stay the night, and I took him up on the offer."

"Dan," Leena said, her rage beginning to seethe through her teeth, "we need you to get over here as soon as you can, not waste time living in the lap of luxury!"

"Relax, please, I'll get over there as soon as I can, but I'm still a little off from the anesthetic the doctors used during my surgery. Or did you not notice my face and arm?" He lifted his previously battered arm and wiggled his fingers a couple of times.

"How the hell did you pay for that?" Mark puzzled aloud.

Dan smiled. "I didn't." When met with two incredulous looks, he elaborated. "ZiValhalla's president is a big fan of mine and told me his corporate city's medical staff would do the reconstructive surgery free of charge." He paused. "I'll be leaving before sunup tomorrow, I promise."

"That's cutting it real close, Dan," Mark said. "And you've had enough delays as it is."

"Mark, Leena, don't worry. I'll be there."

That evening, Mark and Doc called the team together for his verdict on the battle's lineup. The team, unfortunately, only had three pilots to pick from. "All right, then," Mark began, "thanks mostly to Elliot –" Elliot was unable to restrain a completely out-of-place ear-to-ear grin "- we only have him, Shaun, and myself available for this fight, unless Dan gets back at some point in the next four days."

"Three and a half," Elliot chimed in. Doc shot a glare at him.

"If Dan returns in that time frame," Mark continued, "he will replace me as a combatant. Elliot, you need to complete your repairs on the Iron Kong as soon as you can. Shaun, you'll go fight Marina's Saber Fang while Elliot takes Reg's Hound Soldier and I'll keep Rick's Black Rhimos occupied.

"Elliot, you'll need to be especially careful. Reg is a veteran and has fought in A-Rank before.

"If Dan actually shows, he'll be fighting the Hound Soldier instead, and Elliot the Black Rhimos. That's all, so have a good night everyone."

An hour or so later, Elliot walked into the kitchen where Mark was busy fixing himself something to eat. Saying Elliot sounded frustrated would be like saying a fall from a five hundred foot cliff would hurt a little bit. "What do you mean you can't ship it? It's practically standard-issue! You don't customize at all? Mark, do we have – no, we don't – so how long until…? You can't do it earlier? Well could you…." He let out an exasperated sigh that sounded eerily close to a death rattle. "No, I understand. Yes." Another sigh. "All right, good-bye."

"What was that about?"

"They can't ship the cannon I need to mount on the Iron Kong in time."

Mark slammed his head into the nearest cabinet. Just grand. One pilot was out of commission, as was one Zoid, and another one of each might not be able to make the battle in time. If Dan didn't get back soon, there'd be hell to pay.

It was peaceful, quiet, and dark. Then, a loud buzzing came from the alarm clock near Dan's bed and he opened his eyes slowly. It was still dark, but not quiet in the slightest. He flicked the alarm to off. It was again peaceful, quiet and dark – four o'clock in the morning in the hotel room Dan was staying in (thankfully free of charge, else the cost would be astronomical for this luxury room). Despite that he desperately wanted to go back to sleep, Dan knew he had to clean himself up and get back on the trail in an hour or so.

After an especially comfortable shower, Dan dressed, took what he brought with him into and took the elevator downstairs. Making as much haste as he could on about six hours' sleep, he grabbed a small meal for the road he had ordered the night before and hurried out to his Geno Saurer. Dan clambered into his Zoid's cockpit and took off, heading for the wide canyon at the back of the complex.

He passed down a wide street, containing several buildings of varying sizes. He piloted the Geno Saurer by a very high wall and turned his head as he passed it. He thought he heard a mechanical roar come from inside, but it sounded more pained than fierce. Dan chalked it up to a large piece of machinery – the sound had roused him the previous night, and he attributed it to the same thing. Finally, he passed by the canyon's entrance and continued on his way to the transport.

A few hours passed and Dan decided someone had to be up and moving in the transport. He punched a few buttons on his Geno Saurer's console and a holographic projection appeared to his left, displaying a white screen, a pair of green convex waves issuing from the center, fading, then repeating, indicating the videophone on the other end was ringing. Several seconds passed, and then the curly-haired, stark face of Elliot appeared on the screen. "Elliot? Hey, how are you?"

"Hello!" Elliot replied in his usual sing-song fashion. "And I'm doing pretty well. Everyone else…"

"What? Is that Dan?" Dan heard Mark's voice ask from off-screen. Dan's screen split, Elliot's face on the left, Mark's on the right. "Dan! How far off are you?"

"I'm making good time," Dan replied, a little disarmed by the urgency in Mark's voice. "What's the matter?"

"We need you over here as fast as you can. Elliot-"

"I can't get the parts I need to repair my Iron Kong," Elliot interrupted. "So we only have the Gyzak and the Dark Horn. So you need to get over here pretty fast."

"I kinda got that," Dan said, irritation beginning to show in his voice. "Look, I'll be there in about a day and a half. Mark, fill me in. What's going on? How's the battle going to go?"

"If you mean outcome-wise," Mark began. "I have no clue." He lowered his head a bit. "And to be honest, I haven't had a lot of time to develop a new battle plan yet either. There's a lot of stuff we need to resolve. But I think I've got a plan figured out. Dan, do you know Reg Farmer?"

"Reg? Oh yeah, tall guy, shaved head, I've faced him a few times. I'm not gonna lie, he is a tough pilot." Dan watched as Mark cringed. "Don't worry, I can handle him."

"Okay, you've done nothing so far to show you can't. You beating Reg is a key issue in this battle."

"And he realized this without watching _ZBCentral_!" Elliot piped in, referring to the most popular Zoid battle analysis program on the air. Of course, it didn't matter if Mark watched it or not; _ZBCentral_ rarely ever looked at teams B-rank and lower.

Mark shot Elliot a look through the videophone and continued. "I don't know what else we're going to do, though. If we put Shaun against Rick Arden and his Black Rhimos, it'll just wind up a stalemate; the Zoids and the pilots are just too equal. The problem is that I don't know if I can fight the Black Rhimos. We proved this before the first battle when I fought Shaun and the Dark Horn."

"You're thinking just one-on-one," Dan said, "that when I beat Reg, I won't be doing anything else. This a regular battle, right?" Mark nodded.

Mark scratched his chin, his mind racing, synapses firing, an idea rapidly forming in his head. "Wait a minute…what if we focused on this in stages? We work the battle so that two of the match-ups are stalemates then have us win the third one. After that, the winner goes on and breaks up one stalemate, and those two go on to break up the other one. Elliot, do you follow? I'm going to need you to be the coordinator this match."

"Not really, but that hasn't stopped me before," Elliot laughed.

"All right, I'll leave you two alone. I've got some traveling to do." Dan smiled as he pressed a few buttons on his console to disconnect from the call.

"Okay, Elliot, try to get your mind around this. It's like an avalanche…" Mark began as the call faded from Dan's screen.

Thirty-eight hours, nineteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds after Dan hung up, Mark could be seen casually staring out the window in the transport's living room, despite that there was nothing much to see but desert. Doc, Shaun, and Elliot could be seen discussing the exact schematics needed for Elliot's replacement cannon, despite that it wouldn't be necessary for a while. Leena could be seen piloting the transport, despite the fact that Doc should have been piloting it at that time.

Thirty-eight hours, nineteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds after Dan hung up, Mark jerked himself into a higher state of alertness as he saw a black Zoid approaching the transport. A few more seconds of surveillance confirmed it: it was a Geno Saurer. Dan was finally back. After practically four weeks of waiting, planning, hoping, Dan was finally back.

Doc opened the Zoid entrance at the base of the transport and the team watched him enter, awaiting his arrival in the living quarters. As the elevator finally rose up to the top, the shining metal doors opened to reveal Dan Bryant, hair scraggly from four weeks of travel, but looking fair, considering his stay at ZiValhalla Headquarters gave him a chance to freshen up a bit.

Shaun was the first over to him, and gave Dan a quick hug and hearty slap on the back, perhaps too hearty, saying, "It hasn't been the same here without you, man."

Dan returned Shaun's affection in kind as he replied, "You'll have to fill me in later, after I take a nap."

Elliot came up to Dan, the two meeting face-to-face for the first time. They shook hands firmly as Elliot grinned and said, "Your eye is messed up." He walked away chuckling to himself.

Leena, Mark saw, opened her mouth a few times, as though to forcibly vomit up a salutation or even a semi-affectionate acknowledgement of Dan's presence. However, among Shaun's impassioned description of the malaise that had gripped them over the past month and Dan's repeated complaints of needing a nap, she couldn't get a word in edgewise, and walked away. She failed to hide her disappointment, but she didn't have to; Dan either didn't notice her, or assumed that she didn't want to talk to him.

Mark spared no breath for pleasantries, but immediately began briefing Dan as much as he could about the upcoming battle on the way to his room. He knew that Dan wasn't listening, that everything he was saying would go in one ear and out the other, and that Dan would pass out promptly on arriving to his room, but he felt any time not spent on strategy at this point was wasted. After all his predictions were realized, he went in search of Dr. Toros for more strategic guidance.

Dan woke up from his nap about two hours and forty-five minutes after settling down to it. He vaguely remembered a dream where there were three Elliots all pointing at his bad eye and laughing, while he could feel it being consumed by flames. It was a frightening dream, but not especially graphic by his standards. Driving it from his head, he donned a fresh shirt and a new pair of socks and headed down to eat breakfast, despite the fact that it was eight o'clock in the evening.

A normal person might be eating a normal lunch or dinner of reheated pizza and stale coffee at eight PM, but Dan was an abnormal person eating a very normal breakfast at an extremely abnormal time. He limped very slightly still from his surgery, and a dull thud could be heard whenever he stepped with his right foot. After spending several hours completing arbitrary and unnecessary tasks, Dan limped over to the sofa, which was practically up against the dining table and flopped himself down onto it, laying down and staring at the ceiling, feeling pensive. He was too tired to sleep, but figured a short break would do his leg some good.

Not long after, Leena walked into the room. Dan sat up, trying to be nonchalant about his actions and not betray any of his discomfort, physical or otherwise. Leena sat down on the couch, intentionally leaving a full cushion between herself and Dan.

Dan could see that Leena was uncomfortable, nay, distraught. She was sitting very straight in her seat, with her hands folded neatly in her lap. She stared straight ahead and barely blinked.

Dan attempted for several seconds to make eye contact with her, ask what was wrong, maybe seize the chance to try and open some dialogue. Leena, however, didn't move at all. As if to displace the tension rather than to break it, Dan got up from the couch and limped to the kitchen area, where he began to pour himself a cup of coffee. This had apparently attracted Leena's attention. Dan turned his upper body halfway around and motioned toward her questioningly with the coffee pot.

She gave a very faint nod, and Dan made her some hot chocolate. Ten solid minutes elapsed without any speaking, or even a sound but the whistling of a kettle. Arbitrarily adding cream and sugar to his coffee, and few small marshmallows (Leena didn't like the big ones) to the cocoa, Dan attempted to stall for more time. He would take anything he could get to keep him from descending back into that horrid tension.

Finally, Dan decided to suck it up and go back in. Sitting back down he placed his coffee mug down on the end table—he hadn't really wanted any—and held Leena's mug out in front of her. She reached out slowly and tried to take it, but her hand slipped and the mug fell to the ground, spilling hot chocolate on the carpet.

Leena paused for a moment, looked down, and put her face in her hands. She began to sob silently, before folding her arms over her knees and burying her forehead in them. Dan placed his left hand gingerly on her far shoulder. The next thing he knew he could feel her tears on his own shoulder. He put his right hand around her midsection, as comfortingly as he could. Soon, the sobbing was gone, and Leena was asleep.

Dan continued to rub her shoulder until the sky outside the window had faded into a dull purple, and he knew he couldn't keep his eyes open long enough to watch it turn blue.


	6. Chapter 6: Niter

Zoids 6: Niter

By The Fraternal Brothers

If you are still looking beneath the title for a disclaimer of some sort, I fear that you are somehow mentally unsound, and given the nature of your mental unsoundness, you might want to read this again in a few minutes, because you'll probably forget that your memory is awful.

Dan awoke later that morning and Leena was gone. He tried not to dwell on the events of the previous night, in light of the fact that match time was now six hours away. Putting all distractions from him head, he chugged the room temperature coffee on the table next to him, and went to work tuning up his Saurer with last-minute preparations.

Upon entering the garage, he saw that Elliot was there tuning up his own Zoid. For lack of his custom cannon, he had taken a significant length of chain and attached his own car to the shoulder of the Iron Kong, apparently for use as a flail. Dan suspected that this was highly dangerous and highly illegal, and Doc confirmed his suspicion at a sufficiently audible volume.

"I don't care how badly you want to get into this fight, Elliot," Doc yelled, "There is no way the ZBA will allow this." He paused, evidently considering his next words. "And nor will I. This is a crazy idea, even for you!" Dan smiled and rolled the storage wheel so his Geno Saurer had access to the garage deck.

As Dan tuned, tweaked, and repaired his Zoid, as well as loaded fresh ammunition into it, Mark was upstairs in the living quarters, fretting about the upcoming battle. He wasn't sure how sound his strategy was, he was more unsure of how ready both he and his Gyzak were for the battle, and even more about how he didn't know if he could bring himself to fight Marina. According to Reg's rules, which Marina had kindly explained to Mark on his way away from the Nitrous Team's headquarters, the opposing team wasn't allowed to make contact with them two days before the battle. What this meant to Mark was, in a nutshell, he couldn't pursue his flirtatious impulses any further with her, which was a shame, because he had been on a roll. At any rate, he knew he was doing an inordinate amount of stressing over the upcoming match, and had no constructive outlet. He had five hours to kill before the match, and he wished he could just skip them.

Mark wished he had more time to prepare for the match. Where had the last five hours gone? His Zoid needed oil, it only had ½ a tank of fuel in it, and he was running late for the pre-match briefing—which he was supposed to give. He burst into the command room and went almost unnoticed, to find that Shaun was nearly finished giving the briefing.

"Alright," he said, briefly making eye contact with Mark. "Is everyone clear?" Shaun's question was met with half-hearted affirmations from all the team members, and they went out to the Zoids or into the command center behind Shaun with a corresponding lack of fervor.

On the battlefield, Dan's Saurer hummed to life alongside Shaun's Dark Horn and Mark's Gyzak. Dan fidgeted a little, spinning his turrets lazily while waiting for the judge to call the match to start. Once the match was called, Shaun took a shaky position at the head of a triangular formation formed by the Armory team representatives. Barely visible across the designated match area was an exact opposite formation of Nitrous Team members, with the Black Rhimos in the rear-middle. If the match continued in this way, the Rhimos would flip the Dark Horn with ease under the Hound Soldier's thoroughly distracting cover fire, and Mark's Gyzak would be open for flanking. This would leave Dan, effectively alone, and facing a professional team at eighty to eighty-five percent capacity. All three Armory pilots realized this, and Shaun's already obscure divide-and-conquer type strategy fell to pieces. Mark began to panic.

"This is a top-notch team, guys, we need to co-ordinate or they'll wipe the floor with us!" he yelled over the communicator. Dan looked around. Shaun had all but abdicated his interim leadership position in favor of straight up combat. This was probably for the best, as it was more his forte. Dan saw him expertly coaxing more speed than many pilots could out of his Dark Horn, and although he was being peppered by the Hound Soldier, he did manage to knock it off balance with two well-placed rockets, forcing it to double back and giving Mark a nice window to enter into close range. Three minutes in no one had sustained any notable damage. The match was going much better than anyone had expected.

Careful not to get cocky, Dan took Mark's advice and began to strategize.

"Mark and Shaun," He paged. "I need you to listen carefully. I have a plan, but it will only work if you do exactly as I say." After receiving a few generic affirmations from them, he elaborated as best he could.

"I need you to focus one-hundred percent of your combined fire on the Rhimos." He could see puzzled looks on their faces over the communication screen. "Bear with me." He groaned a bit as he sustained a small hit from one of Marina's medium sized guns. "I can disable the Saber Fang and Hound Soldier in this thing easily. The only problem is I had to use some different equipment on it because the old stuff was out of date." He dodged another small missile, this time from the Hound Soldier, which had evidently made its way back to the action. "The newer equipment hasn't been modified at all, so I'm a little top heavy. Rick doesn't know that yet, but if he watches me at all he'll see I'm a bit sluggish for a Saurer, and he can flip me like a pancake in the Command Wolf if I'm not careful, so he's the big threat. Keep him occupied at ALL costs." Mark and Shaun nodded and their faces disappeared off the screen.

Dan had a few tricks up his sleeve that the rest of the team didn't know about, even Doc. Most of the money he'd made in his early career went to customizing this Zoid, and now he was finally going to put it to good use. He rounded on the Saber Fang, and began to charge straight at it, at about seventy-five percent of his potential speed. It was a game of chicken now, and Dan's strategy hinged on winning. With forty yards between himself and Marina, he flicked on his head lights and opened his Zoids mouth. And twenty yards, he turned the Zoids head to the left and began to let out a cloud of gray smoke through the throat pipe. He had predicted Marina's move perfectly. She ducked quickly to her right, and landed in the exact center of the smoke cloud.

Now Dan had her where he wanted her. She was in the thick of his Zoids custom smoke cloud. He jammed a button on the ceiling of his cockpit which triggered the hydraulic legs he'd had installed nine years before. He heard the creak and immediate hiss, and couldn't but grin knowing that they still worked. Now he was fifteen feet in the air from his hydraulic jump, and he swung his lateral control levers wildly to the left.

"Here goes nothing."

Shaun and Mark were having a fairly easy time keeping Rick busy, although neither could sustain too much more damage from Reg. Just as he was hoping Dan would come take care of Reg soon, he glanced out of his window at saw it. There was the outline of the Saber Fang, amid a cloud of thick blue-gray fog. Then Shaun saw the Geno Saurer's headlamps flood his field of vision for a split second.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the Saurer lept fifteen or twenty feet up, spun in a one-hundred and eighty degree turn, and whaled into the Saber Fang with its massive tail. The tail came crashing into the mechanical cat, hitting it full in the torso. The Fang flipped over six times, finally landing on its feet, albeit with both of its front ankles nearly snapped. It sputtered and fell over onto its side.

Now, Dan turned his attention to the Hound Soldier. It seemed he had done so just in time, for as he locked his sights on it, three of its missiles came hurtling in towards his midsection, nearly making him lose his balance. Reg had taken a much more strategically distant stance with which to pepper Mark and Shaun, and eventually Dan. Dan sprinted full-on across the four-hundred yard gap between himself and the Hound Soldier, taking advantage of the cooling time required between the firing of such heavy rounds. He could see, hear, and feel the medium and light rounds covering his Geno Saurer's windshield and chest area.

Dan fired his two largest guns at the ground on either side of the Hound Soldier, and his timing couldn't have been better. Reg was just about to feint and dash out the way of the thundering Geno Saurer, but seeing the explosions and subsequent dust clouds, had to abandon that course at the last possible second. In the second it took Reg to recover, the fate of the battle was sealed. The Geno Saurer came body-slamming into the Hound Soldier with its full girth, knocking it helplessly onto its back, and accidentally removing one of its larger mortar guns.

Looking back, Dan saw that Shaun and Mark could not have fared better. While their Zoids were significantly banged up, and the Rhimos was in virtually pristine condition, the two of them seemed to have found it humorous to actually rest their Zoids on top of the Rhimos and turn off their respective ignitions so that it couldn't move.

That would get them a few style points.

"Battle over," the judge called. "Battle over. The winner is…" it raised its left hand. "The Armory Team!"

From there, things went up. In the five weeks following the Armory Team had taken on and defeated two opponents, their schedule tightening as they grew accustomed to fighting in this rank.

First came the Howler Team, four pilots who all used Command Wolves. This would have been a solid strategy had it not been for Shaun and Dan's extensive experience with losing in them, and subsequently an intimate knowledge of their weaknesses. As it was, they went down almost pitifully easy.

Their next challenger was the Rancor group, a combination of a Gordos, an Elephander and a Pteras. Their defeat was a bit less certain than that of the Howlers. Their Pteras pilot was apparently fairly new to sky Zoids, and his cockiness was a major contributor to their downfall, although Elliot did manage to hold the Elephander's trunk straight up in the air with one of his Iron Kong's hands (the other was absent in favor of the cannon, which was finally made and installed) for a solid five minutes, rendering it useless.

Throughout this period Shaun had taken very well to strategizing, and had all but assumed the role in Mark's absence from it. He was now beginning to draw up more complex, phase-based strategies, and had four basic formations drawn for every combination of three Zoids the Armory Team could possibly be piloting. From these, and based on what Zoids and pilots they were facing, he would deviate from the standard mold as necessary. So far it had been working out with few flaws. Their simulator was now helpless against them at 45 difficulty. Doc scarcely allowed it to be placed as high as fifty percent, because no team in history could possibly have been more dangerous than fifty or fifty-five percent, and the team would need to sign a waiver for going that high.

Things were looking up for the team off the battlefield as well. Leena and Dan had both fully recovered from their injuries, and Leena had piloted her Gun Sniper to a good degree of success against the Rancor team. Additionally, from their three victories, the Armory Team had brought in a decent sum of money, and Dan and Doc took to allocating it, having Mark run the accounting until they could bring a professional in to do it.

The team members finally got paid legitimately, and a hefty sum it was for each, as they had gone a good ten weeks without pay. Mark was finally able to upgrade his Gyzak with some of the team's winnings, and a good thing as Mark's Gyzak was an archaic model that desperately needed an overhaul, and he added a pair of medium cannons to his Zoids back and vastly improved the Gyzak's engine to handle the load and then some. Still, no matter how many times Mark piloted it, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was…off about it.

Elliot, who was already filthy rich, went to town on the Iron Kong with his winnings. His new cannon had arrived, and it was sufficiently ridiculous, as it had replaced the Zoid's right arm. The original cannon was designed to substitute for the entire arm, and so was one of the longest cannons ever produced. With his winnings, Elliot had the cannon adjusted so it crooked at the halfway point on a hinge, like an actual arm, allowing him to aim it much more easily. When it was entirely straight it shot a different kind of round--Energy Rounds. They were Heat Rounds specifically, which not only served to push enemy Zoids backwards a significant distance, but any Zoid with thermal sensing capabilities would just go haywire, and probably need a tune-up just from being hit once. Additionally, Elliot had gotten rid of the drab Culling Team black and grey paint coat that he had on his Kong. The Zoid was now steely silver, finished with chrome, and had the windshield aligned slightly downward towards the center, to give what Elliot called "an angrier look."

Shaun had spent a surprisingly small portion of his money on his Zoid. He was always very hesitant to make major alterations to it. It had served him very well exactly as it was for several years. If it wasn't broken, why fix it? While he didn't purchase any guns for his Zoid, he _did_ acquire a larger viewing screen, a bit more armor around the cockpit, and an entirely new software interface which made it much easier to aim while moving. This tactic was unconventional for a Dark Horn, and his particular skill in implementing such an unconventional strategy was a major contributor to his deadliness.

Dan's winnings went to updating the top-heavy components of his Geno Saurer. He then weighted the end of its tail for use as a bludgeon as well as for balance, and bought himself a new car.

Leena paid for her repairs like everyone else. After that, however, she put ninety-eight percent of her winnings away in the bank, and that was that.

The entire team was in high spirits. For the first time ever they did something together that wasn't Zoid battling--although, it was spectating at a Zoid battle. The five of them piled into Dan's new car and drove to a nearby city. There they spent the day occupying various restaurants and stores until the battle they had come to watch started.

It was a spectator match, which were uncommon these days. Spectator matches were held only between teams with Zoids of similar types and capabilities. Usually three versus three, each team would send one Zoid in at a time, and they would fight until one couldn't anymore, then the next set of Zoids would come in, and so on. This prolonged matches so that crowds felt they were getting their money's worth. The match was decided based entirely on who had the most survivors, but crowd-pleasing ploys dictated that a few point bonuses ought to be awarded. That way people would have something to swoon over.

Mark picked up a pamphlet out of a box by the door of the arena. It showed all the combatants, their Zoids, and a brief at-a-glance bit of information about each one. Sometimes it was battle history, sometimes personal details, always including a season record. Mark saw nothing interesting on the pamphlet except the information about the captain of the challenging team. They were called the Gaunt group, and their captain was Jacob Parsons. Mark skipped past a paragraph about Jacob's long time friendship with opposing Blood-Letters team captain Dorian Ormanofsky, and read his battle statistics. He had been out of commission with mononucleosis for several months, and subsequently had been demoted to B-Rank. He was now taking any match he could schedule to work his way back up to A-Rank before the season ended. So, Mark deduced, unless the after-effects of his mono infection were still seriously taxing his ability to compete, Jacob's team would be, effectively, an A-Team wiping the floor with a B-Team.

The match unfolded accordingly. In the first round the Gaunt team rookie Chuck Stanholdt completely dismantled Blood Letter captain Ormanofsky. Stanholdt drove a Bio Raptor and Ormanofsky a second-rate Blade Liger. The carnage was almost difficult to watch. After that, the Gaunt team sent Corey Hauser to fight against Blood Letter Zach LaMont. Hauser's Double Sworder was a beetle-type Zoid not often seen in contemporary combat. LaMont piloted a similar Zoid, the Gunbeetle, which Mark suspected was why they were pitted against each other. Hauser, apparently knowing that his primarily close-range capabilities put him at a disadvantage, closed the gap between himself and LaMont in the blink of an eye, and began to pummel him mercilessly, sending sparks—and the occasional nut or bolt—flying toward the two-foot thick screen of glass between the Zoids and the audience.

Finally, even though the Blood Letters could not win the match, they held the final round. The Blood Letters had recently replaced their veteran combatant Caleb Daniels with a rookie named Matthew Blake. Blake was nervous in the cockpit of his Shadow Fox as Gaunt team captain Parsons walked out casually, taking his sweet time, in a Zoid the likes of which Mark had never seen on a battlefield before. Looking up at the big screen he saw that it was called the Bear Fighter. It was, in fact, the most frightening thing he'd ever seen, next to Elliot's Iron Kong.

The Bear Fighter entered the Ring, stood up on its hind legs and played a very intimidating, very realistic sound bite of several bears roaring angrily which seemed to permeate the shrapnel shield to better terrify the audience members. In Leena's case it worked, and she promptly left the arena in search of food, bathroom, or any excuse to be away from that monstrous bear.

Mark got the impression that he was not the only one to whom this Zoid was news. Dan had never seen anything like it, and Shaun thought it existed only in comic books. But here it was, broad shouldered, growling, and fierce. Reading a bit further into the pamphlet, Mark saw that this was one of three Bear Fighters Jacob owned, this one he called "The Bear Shooter" and he had never had to move during a match while he was piloting it, or so he claimed. This was surely a testament to significant ranged capabilities, Mark thought. Looking down at it again, he wondered why there was not a single gun mounted on it.

The bell rang signaling the start of the match, and in five seconds his question was answered. Panels opened up on the arms, shoulders, chest, back, head, and hindquarters of the Zoid to reveal the most diverse and expensive assortment of guns Mark had ever seen on one Zoid. There were six long-range shell cannons, twelve short range machine rifles, and eight all-range energy cannons, though not as long or as powerful as Elliot's…individually. Together, they added up to twice his heat capability.

Jacob spared no time toying with his enemy. He quickly unloaded every single round he had from every single gun, covering the other side of the field with heat, shrapnel, and little tiny hunks of metal whizzing past at the speed of sound. The Shadowfox attempted to dodge one rocket that had somehow made its way to the forefront, but feinted directly into the path of an energy beam. It was barely recognizable when the dust cleared, although Blake was mostly unharmed, and was able to limp away.

Everyone was speechless as they walked away from the arena. That had been the most ruthless display of Zoid annihilation any of them had ever seen.

"That was ridiculous," Mark began, shaking his head. "How does he have that kind of firepower on ONE Zoid?"

Suddenly Shaun stopped walking. The rest of the team turned back and looked at him. He was looking up at a view screen on the wall of the battle complex which they were now exiting. On the screen was a bony but distinctly handsome man of about twenty-seven, with shaggy hair and a small pair of glasses, being interviewed by a _ZBCentral _newscaster. The banner below his face ran "Jacob Parsons, Zoid Battler."

"So tell me," The interviewer began "With one more victory between you and your previous A-Rank Status, how do you feel?"

"I feel pretty confident." Parsons began. "I don't think there's anyone in this bracket we can't handle."

"Well, the next team you face does feature Dan Bryant and Elliot Handel, both of whom have a lot experience in A-Rank."

At this, everyone's jaw dropped, and no one heard the rest of the question or Parson's confident reply. The interview ended, and on the screen, the days ranking took its place.

The Gaunt team had won in such a landslide that the Blood Letters were demoted from B-Rank to D-Rank.


	7. Chapter 7: Hairbreadth

Zoids: Armory Team

By The Fraternal Brothers

You know what? We aren't even gonna mock you this time. Just skip down and read.

Seven: Hairbreadth

The general mood in the transport after the spectator match could best be described as "despairing." No one on the team was truly looking forward to the next battle after seeing what the Gaunt Team did to the Blood Letters Team. While the team had been doing well, the fight they saw was an incredibly sobering experience for them. This was surprisingly true for Elliot, who before now never seemed to be down. Dan, too, was intimidated by the battle, and the fact that the two A-class pilots on the team were worried about this upcoming encounter served only to lessen the entire team's confidence.

Business went about as usual, however. Whatever damage the Rancor group did to the team's Zoids was fixed within the week. The Nitrous Team had caught a break, winning two battles as well and getting a bye in their schedule, so Mark called, asking Marina for a second chance at training, the first chance ruined by one of Reg's rules.

As his luck would have it, after two rings of the phone, a torso in an immaculate white shirt appeared to answer the phone. The field of view shifted upward, passing the shirt's collar and stopping at a stern face with hard, defined features, looking almost statuesque. His head was shaven and jowls were just beginning to form around his mouth. "You have reached Nitrous Team Headquarters, this is Reg speaking," the man said in a deep, stern voice. "Can I do anything for you?" It suddenly dawned on Mark that he had never seen Reg, only heard from him.

"Um, yes, hello," Mark began, stammering a bit. "It's Mark Sanders, Captain of B-Class Armory Team; I'd like to speak with Marina, if you don't mind."

Reg eyed him suspiciously for a second, then replied, expression unchanging, "I don't…at the moment." He reached off-screen and spoke, his voice now echoing throughout the headquarters, presumably through a speaker system. "Marina, you have a call."

The screen went a shimmering blue for a few seconds, a traditional hold screen, complete with a white dot revolving around an unseen point, just to give the eyes something to do while waiting for the next person to pick up. Marina then picked up, this time wearing something more casual; what Mark could see was a white jacket on top of a red shirt. Her jet-black hair hung down to her shoulders.

"Mark!" she exclaimed. "It's been a while." Marina brushed her hair back over her ears causally. "I heard you guys have been doing well."

"The team?" Mark replied awkwardly. "Yeah, on the field at least. We've been stuck in the transport a while, so no one's really had a lot of time to themselves. Pretty bad cabin fever, you know?"

"That's rough." Marina replied. She seemed to genuinely share some of Mark's trouble. Mark supposed that was what he liked so much about her. She was very genuine. "Well," she said, trying to make the topic a little lighter. "You guys have any matches coming up?" 

"Yeah," Mark said, his voice falling out a bit. "Next Wednesday. It pretty much determines whether we qualify for the second quarter." Two months of the eight month season had passed, and although the team had not lost any matches after the battle against the Culling Team, their personal score totals were not consistent enough to permit them a loss.

"I'm sure you'll win," Marina said, picking up her mug of coffee from below the monitor. "You guys have been doing amazing lately." She sipped from the mug. "Who is it against?" She added, placing the mug back from whence she had taken it.

"The Gaunt Team."

Marina knocked her mug over, spilling coffee all over the console. Her eyes went wide and her jaw, usually firmly in place, slackened.

"Oh," she said, "…oh, wow."

Block, step, block, step, strafe, block, parry, thrust. Parry, strafe, feint, thrust. "Halt!" called a judge robot. This judge was much like other judge robots, save for two things: it had light blue accents to its white body, and it was calling a fencing match.

A short man with cropped, well-groomed blond hair and gentle, solid features removed his mask. "That's game. Nice going, man."

"Thanks, Chase," his opposite said, removing his mask. He shook his hair out and adjusted his glasses. "Hey, one more go?"

"I don't know, Jacob," came the reply, from Chase Hastings, who was shaking his head. "This is, what, the third time in a row you've beaten me? Besides, we've got to practice. We're facing the Armory Team in a couple weeks, and they've got two A-Rank pilots." Jacob didn't quite smirk, but all the same his general air was one of quiet confidence. 

"After the way we dismantled the Blood Letters," he began, sheathing his blade, "I don't think we're in any danger. The team is in top shape." Chase didn't seem convinced.

"That's something you say to investors and bettors, not to the team," Chase replied. "Dan Bryant _and_Elliot Handel? Not to mention that the rest of the Armory Team isn't too shabby either." He hung his foil on the wall and stepped out of his fencing gear, letting it drop to the floor.

"You're worrying over nothing," Jacob said, following suit. "Just look at the Armory Team for a minute, their Zoids in particular." He watched as Chase counted them out: Gun Sniper, Geno Saurer, Gyzak, Dark Horn, Iron Kong. "Notice that the fastest Zoid they have is an archaic Gyzak, piloted by probably the team's worst pilot. The Bear Runner will take care of them in no time." He paused for a second, twirling his foil in one hand. "No doubt."

It was Sunday, about eleven in the morning. The Armory Team was set to face the Gaunt Team on Wednesday around two in the afternoon. Mark hadn't heard from or seen Dan in eighteen hours. He was making his way from the living space of the carrier into the cargo hold. 

Dan's Zoid was at top of the Ferris-wheel-like contraption, and although Mark could not see its head, he could imagine no other place where Dan might be. 

He was about to step onto the lift that would take him up to Dan's Zoid when the doors to the bottom of the chamber opened and he heard a familiar voice ringing through the chasm that was the cargo hold. Two of the six Zoid platforms were unoccupied, creating an area between Mark and the door which was entirely devoid of Zoids. Thusly, his heart leapt when he saw who it was.

"Mark?" He heard Marina's voice say, "Mark, are you in here?" In what was probably a terribly unwise decision, Mark grabbed an unused suspension cable with his gloved hands, hitched it to his belt hastily by the harnessing mechanism and slid down the seventy-five foot distance between him and the floor, slowing down just enough to not break his legs with excitement. Realizing that this reaction was not only outlandish, but completely shocking, he tried to act as normally as possible.

"What brings you all the way out here? Aren't you guys stationed three sectors away from here?"

Marina replied calmly, "I doubt that you practically jumped to your death to get down here and ask why I came." With that she threw her arms flirtatiously around his neck in a hug which was as much a greeting as it was…well, something Mark couldn't quite put his finger on. "We were out there for a few weeks, but we got a bye for our end-of-quarter match, so we're on our way to a nearby Zoid encampment called ZiValhalla for a grade-A tune-up. New ammo, top quality fuel, maintenance on everything. They're pretty much taking our Zoids apart, cleaning them up and putting them back together." She brushed the hair from her eyes. "And the commission is paying for all of it, as a reward for our high individual point totals. It's part of some program to reward pilots who really exemplify what they feel Zoid Battling should be about. I'm really just in it to scratch my trigger finger, but if they want to give me perks for it, I'll take 'em!" She giggled a bit as she concluded her monologue.

Mark thought the name ZiValhalla sounded vaguely familiar, but pushed it from his mind. "Well it's great that you're here!" he said, "How long can you stay?" 

"We're stopped for the night about four miles from here, I told Reg I was going and he didn't try to stop me, so I figure I'll stay in my Zoid tonight, and head back over there at about eight AM."

"Oh," Mark said, obviously stunned. "Um, okay!"

Marina nodded, laughing slightly as she placed a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. "I've been having a bit of…cabin fever, myself." she said, leaving the conversation to trail off.

The two stood there a moment, saying nothing, until Mark remembered why he had originally come to the cargo hold. "Oh," he said, recovering from the various distractions of the last five minutes. "Dan's at the top of the wheel, I think. I was just about to go check on him. You want to go up?" Marina nodded, and Mark gestured a little stiffly for her to follow him.

They walked a very short distance to a gate on one side of the platform; a five enumerated it in red paint. Mark pushed a button and the two waited for the lift to come down to their level. The six-foot gates slid back and the two stepped onto the uncovered platform. As the gates closed, Mark turned to a small console, with six numbers aligned with the current configuration of the platforms in a circle, a five on the bottom, a two on the top. He pressed the two and the gates locked. The lift gave a lurch and began jerking upward. Marina swayed a bit at the sudden motion, leaning up against Mark to keep herself from falling over as the lift 

climbed higher. Mark steadied himself against the extra weight leaning on him and held an arm around Marina to keep her from falling the other way.

The lift slowed as it reached the top platform and the gates parted, a Geno Saurer standing silently before them, a door in its underbelly open, light shining down from it. Mark, curious, climbed a ladder leading up into the Zoid and hopped in. After recovering for a spell, Marina joined him, and the two of them walked through to the cockpit.

Inside sat Dan, strapped in at nearly all points, save for his hands and legs. Each hand was gripping a joystick, knuckles white, and his legs were free, swiveling the chair around. In front of Dan, sixteen small holographic screens were arranged in a grid, each displaying a single solid color. Every screen was different from every other save one, creating a matching pair of colors somewhere on the grid. Every few seconds or so, Dan would move himself and the controls around, a laser sound effect played to coincide with Dan pressing a button on the joysticks, and the two identical screens flashed briefly. The screens then shuffled themselves around, changed colors, and the process repeated. A small digital clock occupying an out-of-the-way spot on the Geno Saurer's console read "17:36:41"

_So this is where he's been_, Mark thought to himself. He reached out and tapped Dan on the shoulder.

"What?" Dan asked irritably. He turned his chair to fire at another two squares, the seat smacking Mark's hand away in the process.

Mark shook the slight pain from his hand and replied, "You've been up here for more than seventeen hours. Do you think it's time you took a break?"

Echoing himself, he asked, "What?" His voice was more incredulous than upset this time. Dan stretched his wrist to tap a button on the side of his chair. The bindings keeping him strapped in retracted and he spun around to face Mark. His chin was becoming scraggly, and he had bags under his eyes.

"I wish you practiced like that when you were with the Howlers," Marina joked. "It's been a while." Dan grinned in spite of himself, and stood up, giving Marina a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. Mark noticed that Dan, although tired, retained a boyish charm in the movements of his face.

He collapsed back in his chair, blinking a couple times as his fatigue started to catch up to him. Sighing, he asked, "So what brings you out here?"

Marina shrugged and sighed back. "Cabin fever," she replied. "I haven't been out of the transport in a while, except to battle. Reg has had us doing all sorts of stuff, keeping the Zoids up, hours of training, you know how it is." For emphasis, she gave a quick nod of her head to the clock on the Geno Saurer's console. "I decided to come by, meet an old friend, check out the only team that beat us this quarter."

"Well, you're welcome to stay as long as you like," Dan said, sitting back down in the chair. "When do you think you'll be back on the road?"

"Reg said we leave around noon tomorrow. So I figured I'd stay out here until about eight." Dan nodded. "In the morning," she added, leaving Dan with a slightly surprised expression. "Cabin fever, you know," she said, unable to conceal her amusement at Dan's reaction.

"I can't believe that Reg is okay with it." Dan replied. He crossed between Mark and Marina, leaving the cockpit and hopping down onto the platform. The other two swiftly followed, with Mark turning to Dan for a brief second after he boarded the lift. "Do you think I ought to check in with Doc, see what he says?" Mark asked. 

Dan looked Marina up and down.

"What he doesn't know won't hurt him."

Marina laughed as the lift went down. Dan got smaller and smaller and finally left the cargo hold altogether. Mark wandered around the inside of the Geno Saurer a bit. He hadn't actually been inside it before ten minutes ago, and hadn't taken a good look around, at any rate. He noticed that the Zoid had a hallway leading from the entrance to the cockpit, which most Zoids didn't have. The left wall of the hallway was lined with non-perishable food behind a plate-glass sliding door. On the right, there was a bed that folded down from the wall, and a shelf with two blankets, three pairs of pants, five shirts, two sets of boots, and a jacket, all folded neatly. Marina followed Mark through the hallway into the cockpit, where the end-of-exercise interface was still blinking on the screen. It read:

End of Exercise

17:38:22

Targets hit: 21,114/21,167

Better Luck Next Time

Enter Name

Dan B - 1st Place

Dan B - 2nd Place

- 3rd Place

"He's a machine." Mark muttered, half to himself, as he turned to leave, jumping down to the deck. He brought the lift back up to the platform and, after giving an "after you" to Marina, stepped in behind her. Supposedly in preparation for the sudden lurch the lift was about to give, Marina put an arm around Mark.

The lift ground to a halt back where Mark had started his swing down to the bottom of the wheel. The two traversed a narrow corridor into the transport's living space. Doc had gone to sleep with a bad headache, while Elliot had laid himself out on the sofa, reading. Leena was in the driver's seat of the transport playing solitaire on the main computer and Shaun was going over the Gaunt Team's dossiers at the dining table, his brow furrowed with frustration. Though Dan was absent, Mark had a pretty good idea that he had gone to clean up.

As Mark and Marina stepped through the door to the living space, Leena's and Shaun's heads turned, while Elliot remained firmly engrossed in his book. "Hi there, Mark. Who's this?" Leena asked politely, feeling uncharacteristically mellow, though everyone seemed to feel a little off, perhaps from the upcoming match.

"I'm Marina Stonewall, from the Nitrous Team." Shaun and Leena were obviously taken aback, and Elliot even peered above the top of his book for a moment.

"I'll keep her away from Doc, don't worry," Mark said, trying to dissuade their suspicions a bit. "If his headache keeps up, then it won't even be an issue."

"All right," Shaun consented, though a little rigidly, with Leena adding a slow, easy nod, and Elliot chuckling at something in his book. "I had to tell you something, but it'll wait until Marina leaves." He turned to her. "When is that, anyway?"

"Eight o'clock or so," Marina replied. Shaun and Leena exchanged unconcerned shrugs, and Leena reached over to take a sip of coffee, feeling a sense of normality settle back into the room, until Marina added, "In the morning."

This brought in a comment from Shaun as Leena quickly put her coffee back down. "That's gonna be harder, Mark."

"It'll be all right," Mark continued to reassure them. Shaun said nothing in reply, returning to the papers he had splayed out all over the table. Leena raised an eyebrow, but swiveled back to the computer. Elliot cackled at something else in his book, likely not intended to be funny.

Mark left the room to head into the team sleeping quarters (Doc's was set on a different floor), Marina following, remarking to him as the door closed, "It's tough to believe this is the team that beat us." Mark cocked his head as he sat at a chair in the middle of the room, disbelief showing in his face. Marina sat beside him, gesturing toward the door. "Well, did you see it out there? Elliot doesn't fit in at all, it looks like Shaun can't stop strategizing, Leena's still beaten up about Dan, and Dan, well, you said it yourself – he's a machine. Would you mind if I gave you some advice, Mark?" He shook his head, though a bit reluctantly. "The team is good, no two ways about it, but if you're gonna make the top ranks, they have to learn to work together more." Mark nodded silently, banking it for the next team meeting.

"What about the Nitrous Team?" he asked. "You guys don't seem like the most compatible group either."

"You'd be surprised," Marina remarked. "Reg showed he was an 'alpha male' pretty early on; we've trusted him to get us through a lot, and he hasn't really given us any reason to doubt him." She thought for a few moments. "He has us backed up financially, and he actually put his own money into the team early on. I guess he sees us as an investment, or something, and I think that's why he's got all those rules. He's protecting his assets."

Mark sent back to her a quizzical, disbelieving look. "That seems kinda…wrong," he said. "It's impersonal. I don't mean to offend you or your team –" 

"It's all right," she replied. "I understand what you mean. I guess you just have to get to know Reg is all."

His expression eased, and he bent forward a bit, resting his elbows on his knees. "The way Reg manages everything you guys do, I think it's strange. He's keeping you guys locked up most of the time, and you said he thinks of you as…assets." Mark almost spat the word out. "You aren't an asset, you aren't an investment, you aren't a prisoner. Reg doesn't own you, you aren't handcuffed to your transport," he wrapped his finger and thumb around her wrist. "You're a person." Demonstratively, he put her hand in his.

A little taken aback by his speech, Marina looked back at Mark, weighing his points against hers. "You know," Mark said, changing the subject, "we never got to train. Coming?"

Marina shook her head as if coming out of a daze. "Sure," she replied, still a little stunned. She stood and followed him out, past Shaun who was still poring over the dossiers, Elliot who was still engrossed in his book, and Leena who was still playing solitaire.

Down a short hallway was a small training simulator just off the living quarters. It amounted to little more than a pair of chairs facing each other, with a helmet to be placed on each participant's head, a visor over the eyes. A control panel swiveled in front of each of them as they donned the headgear.

An interface appeared, filling their range of vision. Marina grinned and selected a one-on-one option. Mark could only smirk back.

An observatory screen played out the action nearby, and Dan caught sight of it, walking curiously into the room. He sat down in a spectator chair in front of it, taking the screen's remote into his hand and flipping to an over-the-shoulder view of Marina's Zoid, a standard Saber Fang, facing a Mark in a copy of his own Gyzak. A simple three-second countdown passed by on the screen, and both Zoids were off.

Mark gently teased his controls, tapping them left and right before darting forward and right. Marina matched his motion, attempting to find an opening behind him. The Gyzak's tail swiveled and machine gun fire was sprayed toward the Saber Fang. The Saber Fang, however, ducked and dodged around it, still working around the Gyzak, slowly drawing closer and closer. Mark spun the Gyzak around when the Saber Fang was at a close range, and took a swipe at it with his Zoid's pincer.

Dan changed his view to one that provided a slightly more distant aerial view and watched as the Gyzak once again feinted toward the left and right. Marina's Zoid prowled to mirror the Gyzak's motions. She suddenly sprang at the Gyzak, and all Mark could do was reflexively throw the Gyzak's arms and tail in a defensive position. The Saber Fang slammed into the cage, knocking the Gyzak back, but dealing little damage to it.

An idea formed in Mark's head, and he began to rush the Saber Fang, dodging blasts from the opposing Zoid's extensive weaponry. His Zoid's body twisted off to the left as Dan switched to a view from inside Mark's cockpit. The Gyzak's claws stabbed at the ground just close enough to the Saber Fang's legs to pose a threat, also on the Gyzak's left, and as if on cue, the Saber Fang jumped to the other side. Mark fired the Gyzak's back-mounted cannon just as the Saber Fang crossed in front of it.

Marina's Zoid was sent backward a good deal, sprawling out on the sands. Mark placed the Gyzak's pincer on the Saber Fang's body, but before it could puncture the metal skin, he caught a glimpse inside the Saber Fang's cockpit at Marina, and he hesitated for a second. In that time, Marina gave a swipe with the Zoid's claw and the Gyzak landed several dozen feet back. As Mark's Zoid recovered from the fall, three shots from the Saber Fang made contact with the Gyzak's back, and the simulation ended.

Dan grinned to himself and walked out of the room, leaving the viewscreen to play as it saw fit.

"Not bad," Marina said as Mark bit his lip.

"Easy for you to say," he replied. "Another go?"

Their session in the simulator lasted for hours, during which time they fought many battles, some one-on-one, others on the same team against simulated combatants. Dan poked his head in from time to time, and noticed that when Marina wasn't giving Mark a run for his money, the two made a formidable team. Leena's swift aggression coupled with Mark's strategic and protective style allowed them to take on several opponents at once without sustaining any considerable damage.

After about two and a half hours, hunger finally drove Mark and Marina out of the simulator room, not that the smell of synthetic chicken substitute wafting down the hall from the kitchen didn't help. Mark looked into the room, noticing Doc's absence, and gestured Marina in. The two walked in and seated themselves, taking their shares of the meal – synthetic chicken, and despite its artificial nature, it tasted like, well, chicken.

"That's the idea," Mark said, when Marina vocalized this clichéd observation. She whacked him playfully on the arm. They ate their food over scattered conversation about almost nothing important, until Dan's voice came down the hallway. 

"No, Doc," he said, taking care to be extremely audible. "It's really a mess in the kitchen, let me clean it up, you just go sit." Doc's discovery of Marina could be nothing but bad at this point in the season, and his response was prompt. 

"I'm much hungrier than I am tired, Dan, but thank you." he said, his voice getting louder as he drew closer. Mark panicked. Grabbing Marina's shoulder, he half-threw her into the pantry closet and slammed the door just as Doc's head popped in the door. 

"Well hello, Mark!" He smiled. "I thought you were already asleep." Doc walked over to the refrigerator. Opening it, finding nothing appetizing, and closing it several times, he finally made his way toward the pantry closet. Mark stepped in front of him. 

"Excuse me, Mark," He said. "I just need to grab some soup." He moved to step around Mark, who promptly countered him, and put a hand on each of his shoulders, determined not to let him find Marina.

"Wouldn't you rather have some pancakes?" Mark suggested, louder than necessary. 

"No, actually," He replied. "I'd much rather have some soup." He was characteristically unaware of the comedy of his situation in contrast with Dan, who could barely keep a straight face. "You see, I've been feeling a little under the weath-"

"Sick, are you!" Mark interrupted. "Let me make you some hot chocolate!"

"It's just a cold, Mark." Doc replied, stepping around again. "I'll be fine, really!"

"No, Doc, I insist you get some rest!" Mark replied, countering him once more.

"I'm perfectly capable of making some soup!" Doc said indignantly, as Mark shoved him into a chair. This nonsense continued through five more minutes of Mark offering to make everything from Beef Wellington to raspberry cheesecake for a Doc whose ailments paled in comparison to Mark's perception. As Mark's panicked and his offers grew more ridiculous, Dan decided to intercede. Taking out his phone, he dialed Doc's office under the table.

"Doc," he said, "Isn't that your office line?" Doc got up to answer it straight away, leaving Mark relieved, and short of breath. Unhanding a bratwurst and a two-gallon jug of Tang, he opened the pantry closet door to find Marina sitting on the floor, legs folded, nibbling on a breakfast pastry. 

"I'd like you to be able to hang around, Marina." Dan said, clearly disappointed. "But I think it's a bit dangerous right now." Mark's face sank a bit as he looked back at Marina.

"You're right, Dan," Marina replied. 

"Do you know the way out?" Dan asked. 

"I'll manage," she replied. Marina kissed Mark very softly, right on the lips, and ducked right out the door. 

Mark was speechless.

Dan grinned and turned out the light.


End file.
